The Faith of the Five
by Lorendiac
Summary: Hundreds of years after the Fall of Jump City, how will the Teen Titans be remembered? They never seriously expected to find out, but it's amazing what can happen when you chase larcenous robots through a wormhole!
1. Chapter 1: On the Road to the Tower

**Chapter One: On the Road to the Tower **

**The ruins of what was once Jump City.  
Estimated date: 4 June 2771 C.E. **

Acolyte Efim knew that the Five smiled equally upon any mortal who did his level best in an honest trade—no matter what trade he worked in. They had _never_ revealed anything to the First Sibyl about members of the clergy being "better" than anyone else, _nor_ said that such people would be easily forgiven if they strayed from the path of righteousness. In fact, there were several sins for which a layman might get off with a slap on the wrist for a first offense, but for which a cleric would be treated much more severely! And that was as it should be.

He knew all this, and yet he took pride in being a first-year student of theology in the College of the Captain of Preparation. If he did well in his studies, some day Efim would be a cleric of the Five, expected to teach and counsel others and to always set an example of correct behavior. And likely to be banished, temporarily or permanently, if he conspicuously failed in that duty.

Today it was his task to make a few repairs to the uninhabited shrine they simply called the Tower. He was always glad to have an excuse to go there, and walk alone through the same halls and chambers the Five had resided in, so many generations ago. (Sure, the Tower had been hard-hit by the Troubles, and since the resurgence of the Faith of the Five, most of the material in the floors and walls had probably been replaced at least three times over the centuries, and the carpets and tiles perhaps a dozen times. But so what? It was still the "same" building that the Five had called home during their mortal incarnations, wasn't it?)

He was about a mile away, picking his way through the half-demolished buildings of that portion of old Jump City, able to see the Tower clearly ahead of him, when something very strange happened. A whining noise seemed to be coming out of empty air, much louder than he'd expect from any insect. Then there was suddenly a huge black circle standing perpendicular to the ground, and it was surrounded by a ring of white flame. No feeling of heat in the air, though. Efim moved quickly and landed behind the remains of a brick wall, about two feet high and half-buried in mulberry bushes. Whatever was about to happen, a little camouflage couldn't hurt. . . .

When he poked his head around the base of the wall and peered through the foliage, he saw a bunch of robots were emerging from the black circle and fanning out as they advanced—and then several people came through, moving fast and furious.

A big guy with dark skin in the few places that weren't covered with (or replaced by?) gleaming white metal and blue circuitry.

A golden-skinned girl with dark red hair and a purple ensemble, with boots that came up past her knees.

A green-faced boy, pointy-eared, in a black and bright purple outfit—but even as Efim's eyes focused on him, the boy was changing into a green elephant and charging at the nearest robot.

A girl in a hooded cloak of midnight blue, with most of her face in shadow. Her bare legs were an unhealthy-looking grayish color. (Unless she was wearing some sort of gray tights? Efim couldn't tell right away.)

A staff-wielding boy with short black hair and a domino mask over a red and green outfit . . . and as he moved around, Efim could see the boy's cape was yellow on one side and black on the other.

They looked familiar, up to a point, although he had never seen those faces before. It was obvious whom they were imitating, but why bother? Actors from some sort of play or pageant he hadn't heard about?

What happened after that, happened very fast. Efim's gaze was caught by the golden girl as she flew up and threw balls of green energy from each hand, apparently doing enough damage to cause at least two of the robots to keel over. By the time he looked around at what the others were doing, several more robots were already down and staying down, and the dark-haired boy was swinging his staff in a way that made portions of his current target go _Crunch. _Some sort of black energy or force field or whatever had surrounded another robot and was throwing it through the air at two more . . . whoever these people really were, he got the impression they had a _lot_ of practice at this sort of thing, so that they could go through the motions quickly without dithering over basic tactics.

Within a minute or so of when he had first noticed the big black circle (which had faded away by now), most of the robots were _hors de combat _and one with green stripes along its casing had scurried off while its brethren occupied the attention of these teenage pursuers. Considering that the humans were probably still full of adrenalin and might be trigger-happy, Efim decided to stay out of sight a minute or two longer until he could make up his mind just what they thought they were doing. No need to draw fire before they'd had time to calm down a bit!

The mostly-metal guy was frowning at a readout on his left arm. "This isn't good. I should be picking up GPS signals, but I'm getting zilch on the usual frequencies! No telling where we are!"

"Or _when_," said the hooded girl in midnight blue in a rather depressing voice. She pointed at the patchwork, oft-repaired structure of the Tower of the Five in the distance. Four heads swiveled to study it in silence for several seconds.

"No, no, no!" the green boy finally wailed. "We've been gone so long, somebody's probably looted my video game collection by now!"

"Okay, so there really is a silver lining," the girl in midnight blue conceded in the same tone as before. The green boy growled at her, making not the slightest dent on her self-possession.

The big mostly-metal guy was still fiddling with his arm, but didn't look happy enough to be having any good results. Without looking up from his tinkering, he said, "Guys, I've got a suggestion. The _next_ time we fight a horde of killer robots and then see the last stragglers disappearing through a wormhole, what say we just let 'em go? Instead of jumping in after 'em and ending up who-knows-when-and-where?"

The green boy scratched his chin and pondered. "I think I could live with that."

"Friends!" the golden girl said in a scandalized tone. "You would not want on your consciences the blood of any innocent civilians who were standing near the other end of the wormhole as the robots emerged, would you?"

"Star's right," said the dark-haired boy. "Besides, we still had to retrieve the Omicron Detonator." He held up a shiny black case that he'd just extracted from one of the disabled robots. "Now that we've secured it, we can concentrate on the little problem of retracing our steps! _Something_ generated that wormhole for those robots, after all—"

"With our luck, it was the one robot that got away," said the girl in midnight blue. Heads began to nod—apparently that would be just their luck, to have clobbered every robot except the one they desperately needed next.

This was getting ridiculous. They called the golden girl "Star," and they spoke as if they—well, it had to be a joke, a stunt, something like that! Efim finally decided it was time to announce himself. He stood up from behind the low wall, clapping. "Bravo! Good show!"

The golden girl's hands flashed green as she twirled in mid-air to face him. The others also tensed, he thought, but no one actually did anything. "Thanks!" said the green boy after a moment, grinning and showing some interesting fangs. "I guess you're grateful we didn't give those robots time to catch their breath and ferret you out?"

Efim blinked. "'Catch their breath'? Robots don't breathe."

"Dude," said the green boy in a long-suffering tone, "it's just an expression!"

"Well, anyway, when I said 'good show,' I meant it was a great performance. Were you rehearsing for a play? Or practicing your choreography for something that will impress backwoods yokels the next time you 'fight' these robots?"

The golden girl stared at him, very wide-eyed. "What do you mean?"

The big mostly-metal guy seemed more amused than anything else as he said, "What he means, Star, is that he thinks this little slugfest was just a fancy fake. With toy robots programmed to act dangerous and then fall down so we _look_ good without really _sweating_ for it."

The golden girl said indignantly, "Fake? We do not need to fake anything! The world has too much wickedness already, without our fabricating even more of it!"

"Dude! What she said!" the green boy agreed. "We've never been that desperate for excitement! Half the time, it seems like the excitement comes looking for us when we'd rather be doing something else!"

"Perhaps he just doesn't recognize us," the girl in midnight blue said reasonably. "The Tower looks very old—and fame is fleeting, as they say."

"Enlighten me," Efim invited. "Just who are you, then?" It was possible, he told himself, that they would _admit_ they were only amusing themselves by imitating—

The dark-haired kid in the domino mask said matter-of-factly, "We're from the first decade of the Twenty-First Century. We're the Teen Titans."

Efim laughed for a few moments before catching his breath enough to speak clearly. "No, you aren't! I was afraid you'd say that! I suppose you worked hard on those costumes, but you're _never_ going to fool anybody around here!"


	2. Chapter 2: The Shocking Discovery

**Chapter Two: The Shocking Discovery**

The masked dark-haired boy stared at Efim. "Why not? Is someone else already running around claiming to be the Teen Titans?"

"Yo! First things first!" barked the mostly-metal guy. "If we can nail down the date, I can recalibrate some software and get a better handle on things! We can argue about identity theft later!" 

"Good point," the dark-haired kid conceded. "Excuse me, but do you happen to know today's date in the Christian Calendar?"

Efim said promptly, "Friday, the fourth of June. Around here, we still use the same seven-days-a-week and twelve-months-a-year system that was popular in the era you _say_ you came from, with each New Year beginning about ten days after the Winter Solstice. But we number the years differently, especially since a lot of record-keeping got disrupted by the Troubles." He paused to do a little mental arithmetic. He happened to remember he'd been born in 2753 C.E. (estimated), therefore . . . "The best estimate is 2771 C.E. by the old reckoning."

The golden girl looked blank. "C.E.? Does that tell us anything helpful?"

The girl in midnight blue said drily, "It means the same thing as A.D. as far as the basic numbering is concerned—it's just that non-Christians are often happier measuring time in terms of a 'Common Era' instead of 'Anno Domini.'"

The green boy scratched his head. "Anno Whatsis?"

The girl in midnight blue sighed, and then began to quietly give the golden girl and the green boy a crash course in the history of the 'most popular' calendar system and the meaning of certain scraps of Latin.

Meanwhile, the mostly-metal guy had been punching a few keys. "Okay, June 4, 2771. Even if that's a couple of years off, it oughta be close enough for government work until I can fine-tune it by studying the night sky!"

"Good work," the dark-haired boy approved. "Without a decent chronological fix, we'd have a miserable time trying to figure out how to set the controls for a new wormhole so that we ended up back where we belong!"

Efim stared at him. "Are you still sticking to that story about time travel? You don't seem to be acting like you really mean it!"

"We're not?" asked the dark-haired boy. "What should we be acting like?"

"If that robot that got away from this fight is so important, I'd expect you to be chasing after it right this moment before it hides in a cellar or something!"

The dark-haired boy snorted. "Is that all that's worrying you? We can catch up with that fugitive robot any time we want to, after we've got our bearings!"

"You can?"

"Didn't you notice the robot with green stripes had a bit of an oil leak?"

Efim blinked. "No."

"Trust me—it did. So Beast Boy here can turn into a bloodhound and follow the fresh trail whenever we're ready to move." The dark-haired boy glanced at the surrounding ruins. "I don't think much other machinery has been running around this area dripping lubricants recently."

Efim took some comfort in seeing, from their reactions, that none of the dark-haired boy's friends had noticed an oil leak either. But somehow he just knew it would turn out there was one—the dark-haired boy was so sure of himself that it seemed certain he _rarely_ got caught out in any mistakes of memory or observation.

"Down to business!" the dark-haired boy said firmly. "You make it sound as if anyone we meet is likely to recognize our _costumes_—but if we tell them who we _are_, they'll call us liars, same as you did? Might be nice to have that explained before we go charging off into the wild blue yonder after that robot, or ask any local authorities for help if we need some!"

"I didn't actually call you liars," Efim politely pointed out.

"No," the mostly-metal guy said. "You just laughed when Rob said we were the Teen Titans, and you warned that nobody would believe a word of it. Is there a difference?"

"Perhaps I thought you were practical jokers instead of 'serious' impostors," Efim offered. His mind was racing. Did they really not understand the magnitude of their offense?

The green boy moved closer. "Impostors? Dude, why would we _bother_ to impersonate some heroes who lived, what, more than seven hundred years ago from your point of view? The Teen Titans must be ancient history by now, so who really _cares_?"

"The Teen Titans were not just 'heroes,'" Efim said automatically. "They were the mortal avatars of gods!"

Five jaws dropped.

Looking around from one face to the next, Efim decided that if they were acting, they were _incredibly_ good at it, one and all! In any other context, he would have sworn these people had just been blindsided with a totally unexpected shock! Was it possible they came from somewhere so far away that they knew nothing of the Faith of the Five?

"_Please_ tell me you're pulling our legs," the dark-haired boy finally said, rather weakly.

Efim paused at the odd mental image that triggered. "Pulling your . . .?"

"Kidding. Joking. Joshing. Teasing. Just tell me you are!"

Efim shook his head. "I can't do that. I am a staunch member of the Faith of the Five, and we all believe—you might even say we _know_—that after the Five ascended to a higher reality, they continued to look down benevolently upon the world and provide guidance for a shattered humanity."

Even the hooded girl in midnight blue sounded a tad shaken as she said, "Huh. I've been called 'demonic,' but this has to be the _first_ time anyone accused me of being 'divine.'" She floated forward and hovered in front of Efim, her eyes level with his as she sat cross-legged on nothing but air. "Now I'm _dying_ to hear what makes you so certain that I'm not the original Raven of the Teen Titans. You never _met_ any of us before, right? As mortals or otherwise? So how can you tell?"

Efim frowned. "Pull back your hood, then."

The girl in midnight blue shrugged and did so. Efim peered at her, stepping all the way around her hovering form to view her features from several angles. "No," he said finally. "You are not Raven the Titan."

"I'm not? This is fascinating. What makes you so certain?"

"Doesn't every member of the Faith know that the Queen of Air and Darkness, in her mortal incarnation, was one of the two loveliest women alive, with a sad, ethereal beauty that could wring a man's heart and tie it in a knot? That was said to be the primary reason she usually shrouded her face with a hood!"

(Off to Efim's left: The green boy goggled at that concept, but the mostly-metal guy slapped a big gleaming hand over his mouth and kept him from interrupting.)

The girl in midnight blue raised a delicate eyebrow. "Whereas I . . .?"

(Girls could be so touchy about their looks, he remembered.) "Don't get me wrong," Efim said hastily. "You're a _very pretty_ girl and all that. And you must have gone to a lot of trouble to get that pale gray complexion and that violet hair just right! But when I look at your unhooded face I don't _immediately_ stagger and gasp for breath as if someone had just squeezed the last ounce of air out of my lungs!"

"I am _so_ disappointed to hear it. Theoretically, has it ever occurred to you that the stories of Raven's unearthly allure might have gotten just the teeniest bit exaggerated over the years?"

Efim chuckled. "It's only been suggested by unbelievers about a million times. So am I familiar with that _hypothesis_? Sure! Do I have any reason to be seriously _worried_ about it? No!"

The mostly-metal guy looked at the dark-haired kid, who seemed to play the same role of 'team leader' that the real Robin had filled in the days of the mortal incarnations of the Five. "Rob, this is silly. If this guy wants to _believe_ we're, like, mythological gods and goddesses, what do we care? I guess he's entitled to his opinion—but as soon as we get back home we can just write it off as a bad dream that probably won't ever happen! Like that time Starfire went twenty years ahead to a future where she'd been 'gone' the whole twenty years, and then she came right back to us to 'change history' so it never happened that way!"

"Patience, Cyborg. I get the feeling he isn't the only one who believes this. If everybody we meet is going to yell at us because we're 'pretending' to be their favorite deities, then we need to know in advance! Might even have to disguise ourselves if it turns out we're going to be stuck here for very long!"

Having offered that pronouncement, the dark-haired boy turned back to Efim. "Excuse me, Mister—I don't think I caught your name—"

"Just call me Efim."

"Efim. Sure. I'm Robin—or Rob, if you don't like calling anybody 'Robin.' I've got a request—we're going to try tracking that robot now, and maybe that will solve all our problems pretty darn quick. But it might not. Is there any chance you could wait here for a little while, and then—if we come back soon—tell us the _bare essentials_ of your faith, and what sort of government you have in these parts, as if we were just a bunch of kids from a zillion miles away who didn't know anything? Just ignore the costumes, if it makes you feel better."

"That's reasonable," Efim conceded. "And I'm an Acolyte—a student of theology in the Faith of the Five—so I ought to be able to give you a decent summary of what's what. But I don't want to wait right here." He pointed to the tall structure a mile away. "I was actually headed for the Tower when you followed the robots through that black circle in the air. Suppose we agree to meet there in an hour? By then, I imagine you either will have found the robot, or given up on it for the moment?"

"Suits me fine. Beast Boy! Bloodhound! Let's go, Titans!"


	3. Chapter 3: Looking at an Extended Stay

**Chapter Three: Looking at an Extended Stay**

**The ground floor of the battered old building called Titans Tower.  
Estimated date: 4 June 2771 C.E.  
49 minutes after the previous scene.**

Efim had been inside the Tower for about half an hour now, dusting and sweeping with tools kept in a closet. No one was permitted to reside where the Five had once dwelt; even Sibyls never established a home within a mile of the Tower. It would smack of arrogance; an attempt to associate oneself in the public eye with the divinity of the Titans. But by the same token, it would be grossly irreverent to permit their former abode to once again fall apart from neglect. It had done so before, in the wild times when the Faith did not exist; but what could excuse willful neglect by the followers of the Faith now that they knew better? Therefore: from time to time one acolyte or another would be sent to do various housekeeping chores and then leave quietly.

One school of thought held that someday it might please the Five to again live on the surface of the Earth for a time, and thus it was best to have their Tower reasonably well-prepared at all times, just in case. Efim wondered if the five strange youths he had just met were hoping to find crowds gullible enough to see them as the fulfillment of that dream.

On the face of it, the idea was ridiculous. For one thing, neither the golden girl nor the girl in midnight blue were half as captivating as everyone knew the real Starfire and Raven had been. Why, when he had first seen these people emerging from that black circle in the air, he had believed they were only _playing_ at imitating the Five; perhaps for some theatrical entertainment where the audience would be inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt for an hour or two, without taking it too seriously in the long run.

The strangers claimed they were not actors; they spoke as if they were the authentic Teen Titans. But they seemed oddly ignorant of the details of the Faith; wouldn't hoaxers have done a great deal more research before crafting those costumes to make themselves superficially resemble the originals? And the dark-haired boy had asked him, politely enough, to stand ready to educate them in the fundamentals of the Faith of the Five . . . which was ridiculous behavior for hoaxers if they intended to pass themselves off as deities who already knew all about it!

It was almost as if these strangers knew the names of the Five, and the traditional descriptions of their costumes, but _nothing_ else. Their shock at the mention of the Five as gods had seemed spontaneous and sincere.

"Greetings, Efim!" The golden girl flew in through the open doorway and stayed a few feet above the floor as she flitted about, peering at the flooring, the ceiling, the painted walls, the furniture, finally looking rather mournful as she hovered in front of him. "It is a sadness to see how much this home has changed, but a goodness to see that it has been well-tended by thoughtful others, instead of spending the centuries just rusting away into nothingness!"

Efim decided not to argue the point of whether or not it had ever been her home before it changed; not until her friends caught up, anyway. (Why have the same argument multiple times?) Instead, he opted for saying, "I'm glad you think it's well-tended. We know it cannot be the same as it was in its early days, but we try to keep it habitable."

The golden girl sighed. "I do not even want to fly upstairs and see what has become of my room. I know none of my old familiar things would still be there, and I know I will see them again when we have solved the puzzle of the wormhole generator, but I still do not wish to see those changes."

Efim winced inside, but hoped it didn't show. "So you found the green-striped robot? Did it have what you needed to return home?" _Play along a little for the time being,_ he told himself_. It doesn't hurt any, and it might lull them into speaking more frankly. _

"Yes and no," said the dark-haired boy from where he was now framed in the doorway to the outside. "It did have some wormhole-generating technology, but it partially self-destructed when we had it pinned down in a building. Cy says he'll need some new microchips and other delicate components to jury-rig something that could generate one more wormhole for _just_ long enough. He doesn't have enough extra in his own body to spare."

The girl in midnight blue was peering over his shoulder now. She must have seen something in Efim's face—or otherwise sensed something. "I think that's more of a problem than you realize, Robin," she said in her usual depressing voice.

Then both of them moved aside to let their large, mostly-metal friend move forward. At the same time, a green hawk flew in through an open window and became a green-faced boy again.

"Is that right?" asked the mostly-metal guy. "You don't have any electronics stores that sell microchips to anybody who can offer money or other goods and services?"

Efim shook his head. "We Madisonians have no microchips to sell. Nor any of the special devices necessary for building or fixing microcomputers."

The mostly-metal guy stared at him. "Do you mean people have forgotten how to make the silly things? Heck, supply with me a ton of paper and enough ink refills and I could print out everything you needed to know!"

"It's not that. A fair number of technical books survived the Troubles. I'm told we still have records of how to make microchips _in theory_ . . . but _in practice_, any time we try to build a factory, the agents of S.T.A.R. Labs destroy it to preserve their monopoly! So we just get by without!"

The dark-haired boy—Rob, he had said Efim could call him—scowled. "Monopoly. So if we want any computing equipment, we have to get it from S.T.A.R. Labs at any price they see fit to charge? If they'll help us at all? They must've changed a lot since the days when we were using their equipment to keep this Tower cutting-edge!"

"I wish you'd stop doing that," Efim said frankly. "You're trying to get me to accept the silly assumption that you were around in the days of the Five!"

"No," the dark-haired boy said with exaggerated patience. "Believe whatever you want to believe! I just don't feel like constantly censoring my own words to _pretend_ I _wasn't _one of the original occupants of this Tower! Do you want me to lie to you, just to make you feel better?"

"Trick question," Efim observed. "It presupposes that what I want to hear from you is, in fact, a lie! And what I don't want to hear is the simple truth!"

Rob shrugged. "For me, that's not any kind of 'supposition.' That's a cold hard _fact_. You may not see it that way, but that's just because you _don't know_ everything I know!"

The Faith of the Five did not include any sacred obligation to wage religious warfare with others just because they were unbelievers. Efim raised his empty hands in a "stop" gesture. "Can we back up a little? You said earlier that you wanted me to give you a history lesson. I said sure, I could do that. The offer still stands—so what do you want to hear about first? The Founding of the Faith of the Five, or what little I know about the organization and agenda of S.T.A.R. Labs?"

Rob chewed his lip for a moment. "Both, actually, but—How far away from here is the outfit you call S.T.A.R. Labs?"

"At least eighty miles to reach their border with the Commonwealth. Their capital is even further; another thirty-five miles or so. We actually have some peaceful trade with them, as long as no one tries to steal or duplicate any of their computer equipment."

"Then let's start with the history of your Faith and your government. We're probably going to meet more people from your culture before we ever meet whoever's running S.T.A.R. these days!"

"Very well. Is everyone listening?" They appeared to be. Efim said clearly, "I will tell you how the First Sibyl learned the true nature of the Five, who had already lived and died long before her birth . . ."


	4. Chapter 4: Tenets of the Faith

(**Author's Note:** Most of this chapter is basically Efim lecturing. Any paragraph of dialogue that isn't attributed to someone else is Efim's dialogue by default. Sorry for the history lesson, but I had to inflict it upon you sooner or later. There's a reason I labeled this story "Drama" instead of "Action/Adventure," after all—in dramas, the characters usually talk each other's ears off! Not all chapters will be quite so gabby, though.)

* * *

**Chapter Four: Tenets of the Faith**

"Hundreds of years ago, just before the Troubles, there was an era when superpowers were proliferating. Some people found themselves with strange abilities and used them toward evil ends, while others were willing to be civilization's first line of defense against those people.

"Various groups of 'superheroes' came and went, and one of those groups was called the Teen Titans. The original team had a core membership of five, although other heroes became affiliated with them as the years went past. Those Five are the important ones. Four of them had powers beyond those of any ordinary human, for four different reasons. Those four were Raven, the Queen of Air and Darkness; Starfire, the Lady of Kindness; Cyborg, the Master Deviser; Beast Boy, the Lord of Mischief. And they were led by Robin, the Captain of Preparation—yes?"

The green boy held up his hand. "Excuse me, but could you explain those fancy nicknames? What did they mean, exactly?"

Efim smiled. "I was coming to that! Raven is called the Queen of Air and Darkness because darkness was at the heart of her powers, and she clad herself in dark raiment, and it is said that she was always dark and moody, prone to see the worst aspects of things. Yet she was fabled for her courage and her self-control, without which her father Trigon might have corrupted her—and then the entire world—beyond repair.

"Starfire was in some ways her opposite: Full of cheer and optimism, always ready to lend a hand to those who were in trouble, but taking it particularly hard when someone badly failed to meet her expectations for decent behavior. Some prefer to call her the Lady of Sorrows because she, always expecting better things of mortals than Raven did, took it particularly hard when those mortals strayed from the path of righteousness. She was not sorrowful all the time, of course, but when she was, it was a sorrow of epic proportions!

"Cyborg was the epitome of making and using tools; the fruits of the scientific method which was served humanity so well throughout its history when properly applied. It is said that he had voluntarily replaced much of his organic body with stronger and better materials so that he could serve his fellow men more effectively on the battlefields."

(The mostly-metal guy blinked, but didn't argue the point.)

"Beast Boy was randomness and humor; impulse and weirdness. A great prankster, a born raconteur, wildly emotional and prone to sudden mood swings. Sometimes he benefited from what critics called 'dumb luck,' yet he had a positive genius for making it work out in his favor in the long run."

"And Robin was the only member of the Five who lacked any 'superpowers' in his mortal incarnation; yet he was their respected _leader_ for all of that. Why? Because, under the tutelage of a mysterious mortal only remembered as 'the Batman,' Robin learned how to fully develop the potentials of his mind and body to do whatever had to be done. Thus showing that 'powers' were helpful in a hero, but not essential if a person was properly prepared to make the best use of any other available resources.

"And yet, despite their vast differences in outlook and habits, all five of those Titans were able to make common cause for years in the battle against the forces of Evil and Ignorance.

"Thus we remember them as the Queen of Air and Darkness, the Lady of Kindness, the Master Deviser, the Lord of Mischief, and the Captain of Preparation. Of course, each of the Five has many other titles that may be justly applied to them, but the ones I mentioned somehow became the 'standard set.'"

The green boy asked, "All that was in their, uh, 'mortal lifetimes,' right? So how did they die?"

"Do we really want to know?" the girl in midnight blue inquired.

"Certainly we do!" the golden girl exclaimed. "Remember, I learned the hard way that the future can be seen and then changed! How does your saying go? Having four arms constitutes four admonitions?"

There was a pause while everyone else tried to untangle that paraphrased proverb.

The dark-haired boy said patiently, "Not quite. 'Forewarned is forearmed.' But I agree with you in principle."

"Now there's a big surprise," the girl in midnight blue muttered.

Efim said, "Let me save you some time—we don't know how they died! The records from around the Start of the Troubles are fragmentary or simply inaccessible. Eentually they must have died, but we don't know even know where the bodies were buried. If there was anything left to bury? Perhaps the Sibyls have known more, but if so, they do not share that information. Some say the mortal efforts of the Five were all that prevented the Troubles for as long as possible, and that when they died, the floodgates of perdition were opened all at once."

The girl in midnight blue seemed interested by one thing in particular from that explanation. "Sibyls? Who are they?"

"We're coming to that part of the story," Efim assured him. "Perhaps half a century after the Troubles began things had gone to wrack and ruin. The world population was a fraction of what it had once been; large nations had broken up into smaller ones, or sometimes little city-states surrounded by anarchy. Then a woman gradually discovered she had been called to be the First Sibyl of a new faith.

"Her name was Cenobia Craft, and she later wrote that she had _always_ been prone to strange dreams, although until the time I speak of, they never meant much; not to her, not to anyone else. Cenobia was walking alone through this same ruined city you saw today, hoping to find enough food for herself and for three children—not her own, but who had been entrusted to her care. She had hidden them in a cave outside the ruins, and each day she would search another sector of the city alone.

"Of course, all the obvious places, food stores and warehouses, had long since been plundered, but she was hopeful. Then one night Cenobia dreamed, and in her dreams, a woman shrouded and hooded in dark colors spoke to her, bidding her go to a certain place two miles east-by-southeast of a structure at the edge of the city that looked like the skeletal remains of a great T on what had once been a separate island. The woman in her dreams showed her, very clearly, a certain rocky outcropping that she would find when she was viewing the Tower from a certain distance at a certain angle, and instructed her in what to do to make the top of that outcropping rotate and reveal a shaft leading down into the bedrock beneath the city. There she would find large stores of imperishable food and medical supplies and other assets.

"Cenobia awoke before the dawn and found that the instructions of her dream guide were entirely reliable. When she touched the face of the rock in a certain place and spoke certain words, the top of it pivoted away and showed the top of a staircase descending into the living rock. As she descended, followed by the children, lights flickered to life and she heard fans begin to blow. What she found at the bottom was like a paradise to a woman with hungry mouths to feed. She realized that sometime before the Troubles, someone must have gone to considerable expense to secretly create this safe haven for a worst case scenario. She later learned it was a sanctuary built by the Teen Titans.

"There were no other occupants of the bolthole, not even skeletons, so it appears the Titans must have died somewhere else. Be that as it may, Cenobia turned that refuge into a home; first for herself and the children, later for those she trusted enough to invite them to join a new community. The Titans had also left a well-equipped library that was of considerable value in rebuilding a civilization with the best ideas of the Old World from before the Troubles.

"The Queen of Air and Darkness continued to visit Cenobia when it suited her—it was not a thing Cenobia could control—and by and by she began to educate Cenobia in the history of the Teen Titans, and Cenobia taught the children, and as their community grew, Cenobia taught others as well, for they learned her dreams_ always_ spoke true in the long run. In time Cenobia became known as the Sibyl, and there were others after her, and today we remember her as the First Sibyl of the Faith of the Five. Although not every single member of our Commonwealth claims to believe in the Five as deities, we all recognize the historical fact that our entire culture grew from the seed of that small community in the hidden refuge."

Efim paused to let that sink in. There was a respectful silence while the strangers assimilated what he had just told them. Finally, the green boy looked around at his friends. "Do we have a secret lair covered with a boulder? Back home, I mean. Something nobody ever got around to showing me?" he added suspiciously.

"No," the mostly-metal guy said slowly, "But Rob and I _talked_ about something like that, just a couple of weeks ago. He said Batman has alternate bolt-holes if anything really bad happens to the Batcave, and we ought to do the same. We've seen the Tower captured by bad guys before, after all!"

"Before we worry about that, perhaps _first_ we should learn more about these Troubles," the golden girl suggested tactfully. "If we return to our own time, and if we know exactly what to expect, we might be able to prepare better the second time around!"

The green boy turned back to face Efim. "So, what caused the Troubles?"

Efim laughed. "Historians are _still_ arguing back and forth about that one. There are several popular theories. One goes that the plague came first, possibly tailored by an alien invader who wanted to soften up humanity. Some claim that Ra's al Ghul used a superweapon to incinerate most of the known oil fields and thus triggered economic collapse. Another theory says that an outbreak of vampirism aggravated the other problems by distracting people from the activities that would have kept humanity well-fed. There is some reason to believe that several of the more clever and destructive supervillains launched separate genocidal plans all at once and the superheroes of the era found themselves swamped and weren't able to stop everything without casualties. Another approach has it that some sort of electronic supervirus caused large numbers of computers to become completely treacherous and command-and-control functions for all large organizations were thereby crippled no matter what sort of physical resources they theoretically had available for emergency action. And then there are those who favor the idea that demonic influence somehow became greatly magnified and triggered outbreaks of violent mass insanity (unless it was just a chemical gas released into the atmosphere in several different places)—"

He broke off. The green boy was holding up his hands in a "stop" gesture. "Okay, okay! We get the point already! _Nobody_ knows for sure what made all that bad stuff happen; it just happened! Things went bad and then they got worse and worse in a zillion different ways before anybody could figure out how to fix whichever catastrophe actually happened first, right?"

"Well . . . yes. As far as we can tell. If you want to boil it down to the bare bones."

"Believe me—I do!"

* * *

**Author's Note:** Be warned that I own thousands of comic books set in the DC Universe. Inevitably, as I try to describe what Planet Earth might look like hundreds of years after the Teen Titans TV series, some of the names, places, concepts, etc., that I refer to will be largely based on my knowledge of the "comic book continuity" even if some of the things referred to were never depicted in the "Teen Titans" animated series—and possibly not in any animated series. I will, however, try to keep such things restrained so that the _focus_ of this storyline is still on the Teen Titans (with the TV versions of their personalities, etc.) and their possible legacy for future generations. I _don't want_ to hopelessly confuse anyone whose primary knowledge of the Titans and the world they live in comes from the TV show!

I mention this now because I prefer to think that **Cenobia Craft**, the First Sibyl of the Faith of the Five, was descended from a couple of well-established characters in DC's comic books who have _never_ appeared in the "Teen Titans" animated series. (Nor any other animated series, according to my research.) Cenobia herself, however, is entirely my own creation! As is the religious organization which she founded! I won't name her distinguished ancestors here, however—that's left for readers familiar with DC's comic books to puzzle over. (But if you're not a big comic book fan, then _don't worry_ about it! Cenobia's already long dead, anyway, so the peculiarities of her ancestry _won't really matter_ in the ongoing plot of this story!)


	5. Chapter 5: Be Less Conspicuous?

**Author's Note:** I'll be frank. When I started this, I only had a _vague_ idea of where I was going and how I wanted to get there. For instance: At first I thought Efim would only be the viewpoint character some of the time, maybe in fifty percent of the chapters . . . later I decided he would definitely be the viewpoint character all of the time, except possibly at the _very_ end, so that we only saw the Titans through his own skeptical gaze until the action was all over . . . and more recently, as I've tried to think ahead in more detail, I've swung _back_ toward a plan of using Efim's viewpoint to look at these five costumed weirdoes from an outsider's perspective "just some of the time" while showing certain moments from the viewpoint of one or another of the heroes themselves. (Okay, so I'm wishy-washy!)

So in this chapter we're going to get inside the head of the team's fearless leader, Robin. Other chapters will show things through the eyes of other Titans, if and when it suits my purpose. But to keep it fairly simple: Any given chapter will have just one viewpoint character for that _entire_ installment, instead of jumping back and forth between different people's heads every few paragraphs. I will stick to this self-imposed rule like glue . . . until such time as I change my mind again!

**Chapter Five: Be Less Conspicuous?**

It was still daylight. Which meant that Cyborg hadn't yet been able to take sightings on the stars and check the data against his astronomy software to double-check Efim's story about this being the late Twenty-Eighth Century. Robin admitted to himself that the ruined condition of Jump City was certainly strong evidence that hundreds of years had passed in the blink of an eye as the Titans came through the wormhole, but the eyes and ears of the Titans had been fooled before—by Mumbo's magic, by Mad Mod's holograms and hypno-screens, and so forth.

According to Cyborg, they badly needed a good supply of microchips and other hi-tech doodads to have any prayer of returning home. If you took Efim's statements at face value, it appeared that whatever S.T.A.R. Labs had become was violently enforcing a self-declared monopoly on such things. Apparently they had no interest in trying to "conquer" neighboring territories as long as they could keep potential competition at a Pre-Silicon Age level of technology.

On the face of it, that suggested the Titans would be wasting their time trying to make any friends here in the Madisonian Commonwealth. After all, Robin wasn't planning to apply for green cards so he and his buddies could settle down to stay as resident workers. On the other hand, the idea of groveling before some self-appointed bullies and begging them to make an exception to their usual rules was not enticing. If Robin were running the Madisonian Commonwealth (or any other large organization in this world), he would definitely have a secret stash of microchips hidden away for emergencies. And the dominant religion in these parts appeared to be the Faith of the Five, in which the Teen Titans played major roles. It was at least _possible_ that they could persuade the current Sibyl to sacrifice a few microchips as an offering to the mortal incarnations of her beloved deities . . . or alternately as a humane way to make these inconvenient "Titans" quietly and disappear into the distant past before they triggered a religious crisis? Robin was prepared to use either argument when the time came to make his pitch.

He hadn't bothered to outline his thinking to Efim, but he had asked him about the possibility of quietly arranging a private meeting between the team and the current Sibyl, the latest successor to Cenobia Craft, and apparently the most influential personage in the Commonwealth . . . if she cared to exercise that influence.

"I can't get you straight into the Sibyl's office," Efim was now saying, "but I can introduce you to the Rector at my college. She, in turn, has the clout to arrange a meeting with the Sibyl if you persuade her you're worth the effort."

"Then, let's go!" Beast Boy said enthusiastically. "It'll be a real treat to meet the leader of the religion that worships me! Oh . . . and you other guys as my faithful helpers, of course," he added modestly, pressing one hand against his heart and gazing upward as if seeking inspiration from the heavens. (Presumably from the seven-centuries-older-and-wiser divine version of himself, if that putative deity happened to be listening at the moment.)

Raven conspicuously rolled her eyes but didn't respond directly to that conversational gambit. The other three Titans simply _ignored_ Beast Boy's grandstanding with the ease that comes from long practice. Efim seemed to wince in a mildly amused sort of way, but didn't bother to stray off into a theological side argument at the moment. Instead, he raised one hand in a _Stop!_ gesture. "Not so fast, please. I said I could do it—but are you sure you want to go marching back to my campus looking _exactly_ the way you do now?"

Beast Boy frowned. "What's wrong with the way I look?"

"Look," Efim said, with the air of a man who is trying hard to be reasonable despite a certain lack of cooperation from other people. (Robin knew that feeling _very well_ after years of trying to ride herd on the other rugged individualists in the team.) "You may not look _exactly_ like the usual representations of the Titans, but you've got the costumes almost perfect, so you're definitely close enough to catch the eye of any true believer—and in case you missed the point, the Commonwealth has _a lot_ of true believers! If we go parading across the campus of the College of the Captain of Preparation, are you planning to tell everybody who asks that you're actors rehearsing for a play? Or do you want to argue with them about your alleged origins, every step of the way? Whatever you might say, do you even want to attract that much attention so soon?"

"The answers are no, no, and no," Robin said firmly. "So your point is that we should change our clothes?"

"It would save an awful lot of fuss," Efim conceded. "Or you can just fly off in some other direction and take your chances somewhere outside the Commonwealth, where people won't care so much about your names or costumes. I'm not stopping you."

"But if we don't want to do that?"

"Then I can lend you some stuff. Not fancy, but wearable. Follow me."

Efim pulled out a keyring and opened up a large utility closet. At least . . . it had been a utility closet in the early Twenty-First Century. Now it looked more like an "emergency wardrobe." There was a wide range of durable overalls, hooded cloaks, miscellaneous footware, folded blankets, and other odds and ends, in various shapes and sizes. "Help yourselves," Efim said.

The Titans did so.

Beast Boy pulled some blue overalls on over his costume. He still had green face and hair, but for all Robin knew, there might be thousands of people in the same boat in this century.

Starfire pulled on a shapeless pink sweater and tied her hair back in a ponytail. Somehow it made her look even younger and cuter than usual.

Raven took off her hooded cloak, which left her wearing a fairly nondescript black leotard. She found a floppy hat that would shade her face (and conceal the unusual hair), rolled up the cloak and put it in a burlap bag, and appeared to feel that she had done her duty with these elementary precautions.

Robin mustered his willpower, gritted his teeth, shored up his resolve, closed his eyes, and finally made the ultimate sacrifice for the sake of peaceful anonymity in this strange new world . . . _he took off his mask!_ What the heck, his friends already knew what he looked like, and anyone else who saw his bare face was never going to get the chance to do anything with the knowledge after the Titans made it back to the Twenty-First Century. He pulled on a brown jacket and baggy blue pants as well, but it didn't stop him from feeling embarrassingly undressed without the black domino.

After the four of them had made their selections, Efim stepped back and took a long, hard look at Cyborg. "You're going to be trickier."

"I've been wondering," Cyborg conceded. "If S.T.A.R. prevents microchips from going on the open market, I'm guessing you don't have many local residents with cybernetic body parts."

"A safe guess," Efim said politely.

"So I've got to cover up my gorgeous bod," Cyborg said regretfully.

"You could just wear a king-sized hooded cloak that concealed every square inch of you," Raven suggested helpfully. After all, Robin reflected, that was her usual way of keeping herself "removed" from the hurly-burly of the outside world. Of course, she could easily smite her enemies from a distance, whereas Cyborg's talents were best suited to punching it out with an enemy. Hard to stay "under wraps" in that situation.

"Actually, Rae, I think I've still got that projector in here somewhere." Cyborg cracked open an access panel on his upper left leg and pulled out some tightly packed odds and ends. "Guys, you want me to give me a hand sorting this out? The stuff I need ought to be in here somewhere. Pull it apart and see what we've got!"

The other Titans converged and started spreading things out. Robin unfolded a piece of paper. "Printout of cheat codes for Mega Monkeys 4."

Beast Boy blinked. "Cheat codes? Waitaminnit—does that have anything to do with how you won our last hundred games in a row?"

Cyborg sneered at him. "Are you saying you don't have a copy of those same codes, grass stain?"

Beast Boy flinched, but rallied quickly. "How are you going to prove it, Dude? Sometime in the last seven centuries, someone was probably brave enough to round up all the junk in my room and throw it out!"

"I'm not so sure," Raven mused. "Who would want to risk her life spending at least a month to tidy up the disaster area formerly known as 'Beast Boy's room'? The more logical course would be to sterilize it all at once with a flamethrower."

"Guys, guys!" Robin said. "If we can get back to the job at hand? What else did Cyborg have crammed into that storage space?"

"Autographed photo of Bumblebee," Raven said helpfully.

"And an autographed photo of Jinx!" Starfire exclaimed.

"Dude, you've been keeping busy!" Beast Boy said admiringly.

"They're just friends," Cyborg insisted quickly. "Can we move on? This doodad here looks like a spare cellphone battery . . ."

"And this is a magnetic compass," Robin observed after opening a small round black case.

"My old Boy Scout compass! I forgot about that," Cyborg said sheepishly. "I always figured I might end up in a situation where GPS wasn't reliable. Keep that out, will ya?"

Starfire held up a long dark fuzzy object. "I am not certain, friends, but I believe this used to be a strip of 'beef jerky' before the blue fur spread across it."

"Oh yeah," Cyborg said nostalgically. "I remember now! I stashed some jerky in there when I was building the original T-Car. I didn't want to interrupt the creative flow by leaving the garage for meal breaks."

Raven frowned at the implications. "Cyborg, you built that car a couple of _years_ ago—"

"Actually, over seven hundred years ago now, but who's counting?"

"Whatever," she said, clearly dismissing his slipshod food storage techniques as a lost cause. "This other thing looks like a paperback novel." She wiped gunk off the cover until she could make out some of the words. "I don't believe it. A Regency Romance?"

"Hey, that one was pretty funny! That author had a real talent for witty banter and hilarious misunderstandings! I mean, compared to some of the other Regencies that have been published lately . . ." Everyone was staring at him, and Cyborg switched gears in a hurry. "Ah . . . actually, I barely _glanced_ at it once, when I was on stakeout and had to pass the time somehow so I didn't start biting my metal nails!"

Robin bit his tongue and didn't ask any follow-up questions. _You think you really know somebody, and then you discover his secret vice. . . . _

"Dude! I think I found what you wanted!" Beast Boy held up two metal rings.

"Right on! Let's see if they still work." A moment later, one ring was on each hand and Cyborg clashed them together and seemed to be a normal-looking muscular young African-American in gym clothes. He clashed his hands together again and became Stone, the persona he had used to infiltrate the HIVE Academy back in the day.

"Still works," Cyborg judged. "Yo, Efim! Which of those looks would go better on your campus?"

"Better stick to the first one for the time being," Efim advised. "By the way, if anyone does ask your names before we reach the Rector's office, who are you? All five of you, I mean."

Starfire said, "You may call me Koriand'r – or just Kory for short. A nickname, yes?"

Robin said, "Call me Rob. Nobody will get the connection."

Cyborg said, predictably, "I'm Stone."

Beast Boy muttered something. Starfire asked him to speak up. He finally said, "You can call me Gar. Short for Garfield, but I got tired a long time ago of people making jokes about insatiable cravings for lasagna."

Everyone looked at Raven. She sighed. As far as Robin could recall, "disguises" and "masquerades" and so forth had never been high on her list of ways to pass the time. She finally said, "Heck, just call me Nevar."

Efim apparently spelled that out in his mind and got the point as quickly as Robin did; he asked dubiously, "Isn't that just 'Raven' spelled backwards?"

Raven gave him a cold stare. "You wanted an alias. I thought of an alias. Take what you can get."

Efim turned away hastily. "Er, right. Kory, Rob, Stone, Gar, Nevar. Got it. Just follow me, then!"

(Robin noted in passing that Efim was already developing the useful survival skill of spotting the signs that Raven was starting to fume.)


	6. Chapter 6: We're Off to See the Rector

**Author's Note:** Cyborg will step up to bat as the main viewpoint character in this chapter. (In return, he has promised to install a DVD drive on my PC as soon as he returns to our era.)

* * *

**Chapter Six: We're Off to See the Rector**

Cyborg listened with half an ear while Robin questioned—no, be serious—while Robin _interrogated_ their new guide, Efim, during the walk back toward Efim's beloved campus. Cyborg could track Robin's logic just fine—the Titans needed microchips to set up the wormhole that could carry them back to their home era. Something calling itself S.T.A.R. was maintaining a tight monopoly on the production and use of microchips (which raised questions about what they'd do if they became aware of Cyborg's existence). If S.T.A.R. had the monopoly, then it would be necessary to pry some microchips out of their clutches . . . one way or another. But first they needed to "know thine enemy," as the Good Book said.

Efim was being remarkably patient about the barrage of questions, really. Cyborg was making an audio recording of everything for further study while most of his mind worried about other subjects, but these were the bare essentials of what he gleaned from Efim's answers at the time.

The culture known as "S.T.A.R. Labs" had its headquarters in a city called (creatively enough) Star City, about 115 miles north of the ruins of Jump City and the newer town called Vision.

_Nobody knew_ who really ran things at S.T.A.R. Labs. For centuries, their shock troops had always been robots. Thousands of robots—but not, Efim said, of the same type as the ones Cyborg and his friends had followed through the wormhole. Efim had never heard of any robots of that body-type working for S.T.A.R., although he'd never heard of any functional robots in this day and age working for anyone else, either, so who could say?

There were rumors that the S.T.A.R. Robot Army took its marching orders from some sort of Artificial Intelligence in the HQ instead of any flesh-and-blood types, but those were just rumors.

On the other hand . . . hundreds of thousands of human beings lived within S.T.A.R.'s boundaries, and the military robots would fight and "die" to defend any law-abiding civilian resident from violent aggression, whether that meant subduing local criminals or decimating an invading army. Efim insisted that any resident on S.T.A.R. soil was perfectly free to emigrate at any time. Just pack up and walk across a border; no robot would block his way unless there was already a criminal charge against him. Each year, a thousand or more of those humans immigrated to the Madisonian Commonwealth, thus keeping the Commonwealth up-to-date on conditions inside S.T.A.R.'s enclave. (It was some comfort to Cyborg to know that while S.T.A.R. might be strict on some subjects, they weren't actually running slave plantations or anything like that.)

There were more questions and answers—Robin asking questions about the Commonwealth's political set-up and so forth, and Efim doing his best to outline it—but Cyborg didn't really care. Besides, they were getting to the point where there were other things to look at. Nice solid inhabited buildings instead of ruined ones, for one thing. And there was plenty of time to look at them because all six of the travelers were still on foot. Nobody flew on this leg of the trip. Robin had insisted there was no need to hurry.on the way to Efim's college. They still didn't know what they were getting into, really, so talking to Efim during a two-hour trek made as much sense as anything. Cyborg and the others had, as usual, followed Robin's lead (after the obligatory grousing).

So after they got away from the abandoned ruins of Jump City and started hiking along the outskirts of Vision, Cyborg took _lots _of mental notes on tech levels and stored them in a new directory on one of his hard drives.

A fair amount of mass transit, but very few personal vehicles. There were odd things about the mass transit—things that resembled very long double-decker buses, but they were virtually silent as they rolled down the street. Whatever made them move, Cyborg didn't think it was combustion of gasoline or diesel or any other petroleum-based fuel. Traffic lights were more familiar; the red-yellow-green system didn't seem to have changed. Newspapers in coin-operated machines. Things that looked like department stores. Street lights. Much of the clothing he saw appeared to include a fair amount of polyester, so these people still had enough chemistry to handle polycondensation reactions. 

One store had televisions arranged in a show window—but none looked to be flatscreens. Okay, apparently cathode ray tubes were still being manufactured somewhere.

All things considered, much of what he saw suggested a tech level very similar to the mid-to-late Twentieth Century USA—if you allowed for the total absence of microchips. Cyborg was still trying to figure out why S.T.A.R. Labs would have morphed, over time, into an outfit that suppressed such technology instead of trying to jump-start breakthroughs to make life better for people. 

After another mile and a half, they entered the campus of the College of the Captain of Preparation. Efim exchanged greetings with several passers-by in the next few minutes. Cyborg noted he appeared to be quite popular with his fellow students. And maybe faculty, for that matter—at one point, Efim broke away from the group for a minute to speak with a middle-aged lady whose appearance suggested a wide range of ancestors. Blond hair that didn't look dyed, greenish eyes, tall and lean, but with facial features suggesting a fair degree of Japanese ancestry? Cyborg supposed that dozens of generations of interracial breeding along the West Coast could create some interesting mixes.

When Efim came back to lead them the last block or so to the Rector's office, Cyborg asked about the lady. Efim said, "Oh, that's Professor Haru. Teaches Tofu Cuisine 101, 102, 201, and 202."

Raven seemed to have trouble believing her ears. "You have classes—four different classes—_just_ on the subject of what to do with tofu in the kitchen?"

"Of course! Many of us believe it's a particularly holy food and take it as the staple of a vegetarian diet, though it's not mandatory to do it that way!"

"_Holy_ food? As in, _better_ than red meat?" Cyborg gave Beast Boy a baleful look. "Gee, I wonder where they got _that_ idea?"

Beast Boy's green face was smirking. Obviously he felt he'd _finally_ gained the advantage in their long-running debate over whether tofu had any real staying power in the world of American cuisine. Cyborg's position that it was just another fad that their grandchildren wouldn't even remember was looking a bit shaky now.

Efim led them to the main entrance to Haney Hall, then up a staircase and down a corridor to an open door that simply said RECTOR'S OFFICE on a little plaque centered on the door. Apparently this was just the outer office—there was another door (closed, this time) across the room. Near that inner door, sitting behind a desk covered with paperwork, was a cute girl with pale blue skin and dark red hair in a pageboy bob. She grinned engagingly at their guide. "Hey, Efim!"

"Hey, Chyrissa! Is the Rector available?"

"Sorry, she's not due back for at least another half-hour—some sort of dust-up involving two of our stankball players who made fools of themselves."

"Then we'll just have to wait," Efim said. "She'll want to hear what these visitors have to say."

Chyrissa raised her eyebrows. "Hmm? Hear what?"

Efim shook his head. "Trust me on this one—she really needs to hear it _first_. If she wants to issue press releases afterward, that's her lookout."

Chyrissa waved a hand at two couches and various chairs, as well as a coffee table nearly covered with books and magazines. "Grab seats, folks—but try not to be _too_ noisy; I've still got some typing and collating to do." She started pounding away on an electric typewriter.

Meanwhile the Titans were exchanging dubious looks. Starfire stepped closer to Efim and softly asked the question that was on every Titan's mind. "Pardon, did she say stankball players? That is one of the popular sports at your school?"

Efim shrugged. "I was never too crazy about it myself, but it's the _biggest_ sport we have. Legend has it that the Five invented the game during their mortal incarnations and used to play it every week to keep their reflexes sharp. If it was good enough for them. . . ."

Cyborg felt his grin stretching from ear to ear as he and Beast Boy high-fived each other. "Dude! We were right!" Beast Boy said. "We knew it would be the Next Big Thing in the world of sports!"

"Marvelous!" Starfire exclaimed. "You must be so proud of your creativeness!"

Meanwhile, Robin was closing his eyes as if in pain. "I swear, when we put this team together I had no idea what I was inflicting upon future generations by letting the two of you scheme together."

In what was, by her standards, a rare gesture, Raven patted him sympathetically on the shoulder. "You can't win 'em all, fearless leader."

* * *

**Author's Note:** Originally I thought this chapter would go longer—to include their conversation with the Rector—but I've decided to post what I can right now, before I go to bed. The next chapter, with the Rector, ought to be coming your way a lot faster than the long wait you had for _this_ chapter. (It helps that I've already written some, though not all, of that conversation.) And a bit later we'll get our first real look at the current Sibyl, the spiritual leader of the Faith of the Five. . . . 


	7. Chapter 7: The Ring of Truth?

**Author's Note**: We're switching back to Efim's point of view for a bit. Remember, he refuses to concede that our heroes might be the real Five, so he thinks of them by aliases they finally offered as acceptable substitutes: **Rob** (Robin), **Kory** (Starfire), **Gar** (Beast Boy), **Stone** (Cyborg), and **Nevar** (Raven).

* * *

**Chapter Seven: The Ring of Truth?**

**The Rector's Office in Haney Hall  
The College of the Captain of Preparation  
Vision, in the Madisonian Commonwealth  
Estimated date: 4 June 2771 C.E.**

They had been in the outer office for forty-four minutes before the Rector returned. Efim had spent the time silently composing and rehearsing a bare-bones summary of how he had met these five impostors and the most intriguing points of what they had said and done. The impostors had looked at available reading material, and other odds and ends, and found ways to entertain themselves quietly. Nevar was perusing a copy of _The Teachings of the First Sibyl_, Rob was examining _The Campaigns of General Wilson_, Stone was leafing through a technical journal and shaking his head, Kory was flipping through a fashion magazine, and Gar had found two packs of Zener cards and was building a tower with them on the coffee table. The apparent goal was to use every single card. Three attempts had already collapsed long before he ran out of material, but he was showing an admirable dedication to his self-assigned mission in giving it a fourth try.

Then the Rector was in the doorway, glancing around the room, taking inventory of the occupants. Efim had known her for two years and no longer found her so intimidating, but he knew how those dark eyes and that hawk nose could rattle you on the first meeting. She often seemed to be glaring, even when she probably didn't have any particular grudge against you. She normally wore black slacks and a black sweater, and today was no exception.

The Rector's eyes met Nevar's and stayed locked on. It seemed like a moment that ought to be shrouded in sudden, absolute silence . . . but it wasn't quite. Mainly because Gar, cheerfully oblivious to what was happening behind him, was still muttering to himself as he tried to put a stable roof over the sixth floor of his card tower.

Efim had been tested in the past for psychic talent. He had about as much potential in that area as an acorn. But right now he had a strong suspicion that the Rector and Nevar were doing _a lot more_ than just _looking_ at each other in the conventional sense.

"That's interesting," the Rector finally murmured. "You weren't trained here in Vision, but someone did a thorough job—and you had a _lot_ of strength to learn to control." She broke eye contact and looked over at her secretary. "Chyrissa, do these people have an appointment?"

The blue-skinned girl said, "No, Rector, but Efim insists they have something very important to say, for your ears only."

The Rector looked directly at him. "You don't go into hysterics over every little thing, Efim. Shall we step into my office?"

Efim hesitated. "Just the two of us? I don't want them thinking I'm telling tales behind their backs."

The Rector paused, her eyes flitting toward the door to her inner office. Efim could guess the general trend of her thoughts. That inner office was not meant to have six guests in it at once. She finally asked Chyrissa, "Are you in a good spot to stop what you're doing for the night?"

Chyrissa glanced at a clock. "I could do that—but I'm still supposed to have another hour on my shift."

The Rector snorted. "You'll get paid for the full shift. No need to make up the time later."

Chyrissa locked a few items in her desk, grabbed her bag, glanced around the room at the five strangers, finally said, "Good evening, all," and headed out the door into the corridor. The Rector bolted it from the inside and then sat down in the chair Chyrissa had just vacated. "Talk to me, Efim. Why did I just send her away?"

Efim spoke for eight minutes without interruption. (Except for Gar's occasional mutters as he successfully completed the seventh, eighth, and ninth floors of his card tower, but those weren't loud enough to really count—and Gar wasn't trying to compete with him for the Rector's attention.)

When Efim finally paused, saying, "That's the gist of it for now—I decided to introduce them to you," the Rector nodded and looked over at Rob.

"You're the leader of this group?"

"That's the theory," Rob said cautiously.

"Let's take it from the top: How accurate was the report I just heard . . . from your point of view?"

"Admirably accurate!" Rob said promptly. "Efim must have a well-trained memory. I might quibble over a few trifles, but basically he told you what we've really said and done since we met him today. He definitely got it right about our saying we're the original Teen Titans from the early Twenty-First Century; arrived in your era by a fluke."

The Rector's eyes stayed locked on the dark-haired boy's. "All right, so that was what you _said_ to him, earlier. Do you still say it's true?"

Efim held his breath and waited for Rob to fall into the trap.

"Absolutely," Rob said calmly. "Robin, Starfire, Cyborg, Beast Boy, Raven. We all met one night and ended up joining forces against a common threat. Then we started talking about making it a regular arrangement. Then we got a base—the Tower. 'Today' we followed a gang of robot thieves through a wormhole and were amazed to find seven hundred-plus years had flown past in the blink of an eye!"

The Rector raised her voice to alert the other strangers that they were all included in what she was saying. "Do you all _confirm_ that claim, or do any of you want to disagree with any part of it, large or small?"

"It's the straight scoop," Stone said firmly

"We are exactly whom he says we are," Nevar said in her usual monotone.

"Yes, and we were most perplexed to discover those robots came from so far in the future!" Kory exclaimed.

Gar didn't even look up from where he was finishing another layer of a card tower. (It looked like he might actually run out of cards this time.) "Whatever Rob says goes for me too," he muttered loyally. "You can take it to the bank. Um . . . except when he dresses up in a different costume with red X's on it," he added as an afterthought. "But hey, he hasn't done that for hundreds of years now! Maybe it's time for the rest of us to just let it go?"

Efim was making side bets with himself. Which of these five second-rate imitations would the Rector explicitly call a liar _first?_

"This is interesting," said the Rector. "I have yet to hear _anyone_ lying to me in this conversation."

Efim blinked several times; then pinched himself. No, he wasn't dreaming. These five strangers must have been _brainwashed_ or something. . . .

"There hasn't been any need to lie," Nevar said calmly. Her four friends were looking confused, though.

"Okay, so I'm missing something," Rob said. "Do you have this room loaded with voice stress analysis equipment that lets you spot a phony in ten seconds flat?"

The Rector seemed surprised by the suggestion. "I've read about such devices in books from the era of the Five, but they haven't existed for centuries. No microchips, you know. We do have some polygraphs on campus for experimental purposes, but we don't take them too seriously."

"Then what makes you so sure of our honesty?" Rob persisted. "Not that I'm challenging the conclusion, mind you!"

The Rector looked mildly amused as she glanced over at Efim. "You didn't tell them, did you?"

"That you used to make your living as a judge? No, I didn't."

"Even if he had told us, it wouldn't mean much," Stone said helpfully. "Judges in Jump City were just lawyers in black robes."

The Rector assumed a lecturing tone as she explained: "The only people, men or women, who qualify as judges in the Commonwealth are those who, with proper training of their psychic abilities, _always know_ when a witness is lying through his teeth. We modestly believe it gives our 'justice system' a lot more honest-to-goodness _justice_ than most cultures have ever achieved."

Rob was the first to respond to that explanation. "So perjury is _always_ self-defeating? And I suppose veteran judges do frequent spot checks on each other's adherence to professional ethics and listen for lies there, as well? To prevent a corrupt judge from always saying that the 'truth' was being told by whichever side had slipped him the most money under the table?"

"Er, yes," the Rector conceded. "If you didn't already know that, then you thought of it awfully fast!"

"I was trained by a very cynical man who is a firm believer in checking and double-checking everything possible at regular intervals—_instead_ of just taking it on faith that a system will continue to run smoothly on its own." Rob waved that aside. "But to get back to the immediate problem—does this mean you'll vouch for us as real time-traveling Teen Titans?"

"No," the Rector said. "I didn't say your story is _true_. I said you're _not lying_. That's as far as my talent goes."

Stone and Gar and Kory exchanged doubtful looks. Nevar said helpfully, "The lady means we could be insane, or hypnotized, or something, so that we firmly believe we're the Teen Titans. We'd be absolutely honest—but dangerously deluded."

Stone and Kory appeared ready to accept that without further comment, but Gar asked doubtfully, "Well, isn't that equally possible for anyone else we meet, any day of the week? Could sound very sincere—and be completely nuts? But we don't put straitjackets on everybody who says something surprising, do we?"

Nevar shrugged. "Meeting a smooth-talking lunatic is one of life's little risks. Although most of the people I've met _don't_ claim to be living deities—that seems to make a _serious_ difference in a person's credibility."

The Rector clapped her hands sharply to regain everyone's attention. "So you believe your own story—and Efim said you seem to have roughly the same powers that the Five should have had in their mortal incarnations, way back when. If you're fakes, you're at least very carefully-prepared fakes instead of just 'regular people' with delusions of grandeur. Frankly, I think this one is above my pay grade. Ladies and gentlemen, I'm going to pull some strings and see if Sibyl Barabel will agree to give you an audience, soonest!"

Rob asked, "Let me guess—she can smell a liar too?"

"Oh, much more than that. I just have a weak psychic talent; enough to know when somebody right here in the same room is trying to sell me a cock-and-bull story. I've known from early childhood that I'd never be a Sibyl. Barabel, on the other hand . . . now she has the _real_ power and knows how to use it. Of course, even though I'll tell her you bunch believe everything you're saying, it's a safe bet she'll want to just interview one of you to start with, instead of letting you charge into her office en masse and surround her!"

"A solo interview?" Rob mused. "Using her own powers to scope out the 'good character' of a sample member of our group before any further discussion can happen? Now who do we know who'd do a _really_ good job of representing the team in a 'let's-get-to-know-each-other-on-a-psychic-level' session with such a powerful lady?"

Efim saw four heads swivel and realized Nevar was suddenly the center of attention as her friends stared at her expectantly.

She sighed. "Let's cut to the chase. I volunteer to meet the Sibyl as soon as possible."

* * *

**Author's Note:** Just to give you some idea of what to expect—the next chapter, probably a short one, will show us some of Beast Boy's perspective. After that, Raven will take center stage as she interacts face-to-face with the Sibyl, the current leader of this religion that worships the five original Titans as its pantheon. That will be a long and strange chapter (or chapters?) according to my current notes—since most of that sequence will happen in a psychic realm instead of "the real world." But little or none of it will resemble what we saw in the episode "Nevermore," because I expect the Sibyl to be taking the initiative in this "interview"—and it's not like Raven has her special mirror with her on this trip, anyway! 


	8. Chapter 8: Planning for Tomorrow

**Author's Note:** This one shows us Beast Boy's perspective, as previously promised.

* * *

**Chapter Eight: Planning for Tomorrow**

The Rector disappeared into her inner office and closed the door. To have a quiet phone conversation with the Sibyl, presumably. A minute later, Beast Boy finally ran out of cards and stood back to beam at his tower. "Okay, people! Admire it while you can!"

The other people in the room dutifully looked over at the card tower soaring up into the stratosphere—well, soaring up at least a couple of feet above the surface of the coffee table, anyway. Close enough!

Starfire clapped politely. Cyborg said, "Nice work, B!" That was about as much praise as Beast Boy had expected, although he'd hoped Raven would say something, instead of just glancing at the tower for a split-second and then going back to her book. (Realistically, though, he hadn't been counting on it.)

Beast Boy swiped at the lower levels with one hand and brought the whole edifice tumbling down as its foundation disappeared. A few of the cards went sailing through the air in Raven's general direction. Then they were suddenly surrounded by a black force field and hovered in mid-air, a few feet away from Raven's face. Meanwhile, Efim blinked at the casual destruction. "You spent all that time building the thing, and now you knock it down so quickly?"

"Sure, why not? It wasn't going to stay there forever, was it? I just wanted everybody to see what I'd done before it was too late!

"Funny cards, though." Beast Boy added, picking up a couple at random. "There's only what, five different shapes on all of 'em? How complicated can a game get with such a limited selection? And I had to combine two decks to get enough for a decent construction project!"

"Uh, Beast Boy, I don't think those are for any type of game," Raven said, actually taking an interest for the first time as she peered at the faces of cards she still had floating in mid-air. "Stars, circles, boxes, crosses, waves? I think they're Zener cards—invented in the 1930s to use in testing for extra-sensory perception."

"That's right," Efim said, addressing his remarks to her now. "I gather that you're very strong, psychically, and well-trained to boot. The Rector knew right away. But I'm told that with someone who's weaker and untrained, it can be a lot harder to tell if they've got any of the gift. Qualified teachers use these cards to gauge potential."

Raven and Efim talked about this a bit more. It appeared that if you were born and raised and educated in the Commonwealth, you'd be tested for psychic potential at various points in the first two decades of your life. The authorities didn't want anybody slipping under the radar, totally unaware of their own ability, and then hurting themselves—or someone else—with an uncontrolled lashing-out in a fit of temper.

Beast Boy thought about the time Dr. Light had taunted Raven in a fight and then had the tables turned on him till he was whimpering like a baby, and decided that the Commonwealth had the right idea there. Sure, Light had been begging for it, but you wouldn't want your own brother or sister to do that to you _by accident _in a family squabble! Of course, Raven had all that creepy "half-demon with magic powers" stuff in her blood, which was _way_ different from just being a psychic like Mento—wasn't it? Not really Beast Boy's thing—whenever they ran into some bad guy who had Heap Big Magic up his sleeve, Beast Boy usually figured his best bet was to _not even worry_ about the mind-boggling details of how it all worked. That was Raven's department, right?

A door opened and the Rector strode back into the room. She reminded Beast Boy uncomfortably of his teacher in second grade as her piercing gaze swept across him before settling on Raven. "Sibyl Barabel will see you tomorrow, one hour after noon," she said. "In the meantime, she asks that the five of you not share your accounts of your 'real' names and origins with anyone else before that interview."

Raven said drily, "We weren't really planning to."

Beast Boy was gathering up the Zener cards that had fallen on the floor; somehow he knew it would be better if the Rector didn't decide she needed to snap at him to get him to do it. Meanwhile, Robin asked, "Is there some place we can get a street map, so we can escort Raven to the right place tomorrow?"

Efim said, "I think the campus bookstore is still open for another hour or so. You could try that. If you follow Perez Boulevard to Wolfman Plaza, you find the Sibyl's house."

"This raises a possibly awkward subject," the Rector said. "How are you people fixed for money if you need to buy maps, or rent lodgings, or pay for anything else?"

Beast Boy had been trying hard not to think about that. Back home, the Titans usually had spending money coming out of their ears—as long as they weren't too extravagant in any given month. (In other words, the other Titans almost always had more left at the end of the month than Beast Boy did.) Lately he'd cultivated the habit of carrying two twenty-dollar bills folded up in his costume for emergencies; people always said the American dollar was good anywhere—but what were the chances that was still true when the United States Treasury didn't exist anymore? And while he couldn't remember offhand what the expiration date was on his MasterCard, he was fairly certain it was sometime in the Twenty-First Century, not the Twenty-Eighth. He didn't bother digging it out of his shoe to check.

Wait! Didn't people pay sky-high prices for _really old_ money at auctions? Collectors who had nothing better to do in their spare time than gaze admiringly at a row of perfect Spanish doubloons or whatever? (Instead of collecting really _practical_ stuff like video games and monster movies and comic books?) Maybe there was a market in 2771 for twenty-dollar bills from the good old days?

While these thoughts jumped around inside Beast Boy's head, Robin was already pulling something out of his utility belt. It looked like a coin, roughly the size of a U.S. half-dollar, but golden in the light as he held it up between gloved thumb and forefinger. "South African krugerrand," he said. "Guaranteed to have exactly one troy ounce of gold, plus a little copper mixed in to make it more durable. Is gold still a precious metal, nowadays?"

The Rector peered at the coin. "Yes, it is. If your coin passes the acid test, you should have no trouble trading it for a sheaf of Commonwealth shekels."

Robin glanced around and explained to the others, "Last I heard, a troy ounce of gold in our day went for roughly seven hundred U.S. dollars. I don't know how long we'll be here, but if one krugerrand isn't enough to tide us over, I have eleven more."

Contrary to what Raven might believe, Beast Boy had mastered basic arithmetic years ago; he was capable of multiplying numbers in his head if he made the effort. _Lessee now . . . twelve times seven is eighty-four, so twelve coins times seven hundred bucks apiece is . . . $8400?_ _Dude! Even if the real buying power of gold has, like, somehow dropped by half during the last several centuries, that would still keep us well-fed for quite awhile! Okay, so grocery shopping just became the least of our worries!_

Then Beast Boy thought about his now-expired credit card and his possibly-useless twenty-dollar bills and realized he really should have known that once again Robin would outdo him in readiness for a worst-case scenario—without even meaning to! _Maybe the members of the Faith of the Five were onto something when they dubbed him the Captain of Preparation. _

Meanwhile, the Rector was saying to Robin, "Since I see you believe that coin is the real deal, I think we can give you lodgings on credit for _one_ night, until a moneychanger is available to convert it into cash for you tomorrow. I can provide two rooms for a nominal overnight fee, payable later. Each room is equipped to let four people sleep in bunk beds—but they are in separate buildings," she added pointedly. "One in a _boys'_ dorm and one in a _girls'_ dorm, and I don't want any hanky-panky regarding who ends up in which room. We have strict rules about that sort of thing."

"I should certainly hope so!" Robin said agreeably. "There won't be any trouble in that department."

Starfire apparently wasn't clear on the implied meaning of "hanky-panky" in this context; she was looking a bit baffled—but Raven nudged her with an elbow and Star shut her mouth without asking for a full explanation right away.

The Rector must have been impressed by that coin; she went so far as to advance them a small quantity of local cash, enough to buy some food for dinner tonight and breakfast tomorrow so they wouldn't be half-starved by the time merchants who bought gold coins were open for business. After they left her office, Robin informed the rest of the team of his decision: _One_ person would do some shopping and then they'd eat in the dorms instead of risking a table in a local restaurant or campus cafeteria full of strangers. Sibyl Barabel wanted them to keep a low profile overnight, and a low profile it would be!

Efim seemed to have been appointed their tour guide, somewhere along the line. He showed them where their dorms were and where they could buy food. Robin, naturally, had taken charge of the cash and did the shopping himself. (Beast Boy suspected he didn't trust anyone else in the group to get a selection of foods that would meet with everybody's approval.)

It was dark out now, so Beast Boy wasn't too surprised that no one they passed on the sidewalk wanted to ask about his green skin and hair. But he'd kept expecting it that afternoon, when they were walking across campus in broad daylight. Hadn't happened yet! Either passers-by had assumed he was wearing skin paint, or else there were other green people around these days and he wasn't ao exotic-looking as he'd always thought before.

At any rate, Robin got them to their temporary room without incident, ordered them to stay put, and disappeared to go shopping. He was back soon with bags of food, saying he'd already given the girls their groceries to tide them over.

A few minutes later, while Beast Boy was eating his third tofu dog and admitting to himself that it was better-done than anything he'd ever cooked back at the tower, Cyborg gulped down the last of a foot-long three-meat sub sandwich and said suddenly, "Robin, remember that time we tangled with Mumbo in a junkyard and then I disappeared on you?"

"Sure! We were worried sick! We wasted a few hours chasing him all over town before we finally caught him, and then he claimed he didn't have a clue where you'd gotten to. So we _finally_ figured out you were still in—or under—the junkyard . . ." Robin's voice trailed off; a moment later, Beast Boy saw the point that Robin must have gotten just ahead of him. Cyborg gave them a few seconds to remember that case; then he continued: "Yeah. Fixit had me in his clutches in a tunnel complex full of hi-tech doodads. That junkyard was _nowhere near_ the rough bearing from the Tower that Efim gave for our emergency hidey-hole that what's-her-name found . . ."

"Sybil Cenobia," Beast Boy said helpfully.

"Right—that would be somewhere else entirely! 'Course, after more than seven hundred years, we've gotta figure Fixit is long gone, and somebody else probably stumbled into his base by now—but don't you think we should check it out for salvage? Spare microchips, maybe, if they haven't gone bad? Fixit wouldn't mind if I grabbed some of his secret stuff after he's dead and buried," Cyborg added virtuously. "Us cybernetic organism types have a bond, you know."

Robin only chewed on it for a moment before voicing a decision. "Worth a try. But we don't all need to go. There's no telling how long Raven will take with the Sibyl—and if anything goes wrong, some of us ought to be nearby to help out. I'm hoping the Sibyl is an honest and stable religious leader who won't go nuts when she realizes we're the real deal, but we don't really know that, do we? Okay, tomorrow morning, all five of us leave this campus together and see Raven to the Sibyl's place. Then we split up. You and Star look for Fixit's lair. Beast Boy and I will find a place to cash in gold coins, one that isn't too far away from where Raven will be. Later you guys will rendezvous with us right outside this dorm. Don't use our communicators unless you absolutely have to. After we reassemble, we compare notes. Then we'll worry about renting other lodgings if we're going to be in this town for very long."

"Sounds like a plan!" Beast Boy said admiringly. "I guess we wait to tell it to the girls in the morning?"

"Not much choice," Robin said. "The Rector can smell a lie, remember? I wouldn't put it past her to ask us, sometime tomorrow, if we broke the rules about boy/girl segregation during the night."

* * *

**Author's Note:** Coming up next, the beginning of a sequence focused on Raven as she meets Sibyl Barabel. This will almost certainly take multiple chapters; I'm not sure how many. Either immediately after that lengthy sequence, or else interrupting it in the middle, there will be a separate chapter describing what Cyborg and Starfire find when they investigate the underground complex that used to be Fixit's secret lair. (Starfire will be the viewpoint character; I've felt all along that I was rather neglecting her, for some reason.) In case you haven't figured it out yet, this story is likely to go on for a _long, long_ time! Why, from my point of view, we've barely gotten started! Right now it's still only been a matter of _hours_ since they entered this strange new world and found out they've somehow become objects of worship! 


	9. Chapter 9: Facing the Sibyl

**Author's Note:** Raven now becomes the viewpoint character until further notice. By the way: I wasn't sure at first, but now I think this serial must be happening _between_ Season Four and Season Five. So the other Titans already know all about Raven's father Trigon, for instance; but none of the Titans know that Terra _may_ have recovered from what happened to her at the end of Season Two. (Not that I intend to use Terra in this story—I'm just making a point about what the Titans don't know yet, that we do.) Now I just hope I got all the typoes out—it's late and I want to post this before I go to bed.

* * *

** Chapter Nine: Facing the Sibyl  
**

**Just Outside the Sibyl's Residence  
Wolfman Plaza  
Vision, in the Madisonian Commonwealth  
Calculated date: 5 June 2771 C.E.  
12:52 PM **

Five bronze statues stood in the center of Wolfman Plaza, facing the Sibyl's Residence on the north side (it was right next to the mouth of Perez Boulevard). The smallest of those statues was twenty feet tall if it was an inch, and the rest were to the same scale. Raven grudgingly admitted to herself that the statue meant to be the goddess known as the Queen of Air and Darkness captured something of the proper mood; the sculptor must have understood that smiles were far and few between in Raven's life, so the _frown_ on the bronze features was only a mild one, instead of having the flavor of a really stern _scowl_ directed at any particular person. That was about as upbeat as anyone could seriously expect her to get if she ever posed for a statue, right? (Not that she thought this sculptor had really been working from life, though.)

The statues meant to represent the Master Deviser (Cyborg), the Lady of Kindness (Starfire), and the Lord of Mischief (Beast Boy) were all smiling broadly, though. Which was certainly in character. The bronze Captain of Preparation (Robin), on the other hand, was looking very intent, as if staring at some danger in the distance that no one else could see quite yet. Seemed reasonable.

The facial features of all five were wrong, though. The Beast Boy statue in particular had almost nothing in common with the original's countenance, but the other four weren't much better.

Raven had never told anyone this—it was none of their business—but she had long thought her chin was too "pointy" for true beauty. Even aside from the peculiar shade of her complexion, which admittedly didn't show up at all in a bronze figure. But the sculptor either hadn't had a good picture of her to work from, or else had deliberately chosen to make some _serious_ adjustments. All five of the people in these bronzes seemed to be full-grown (mid-to-late twenties, she thought), and the Queen of Air and Darkness looked downright ravishing, in a frowning "ice princess" sort of way. As if she ought to be starring in blockbuster movies, or posing for magazine covers, or something else that would capitalize upon her undeniable pulchritude while it lasted.

_Or else,_ something whispered in the back of Raven's mind, _this might be reasonably close to the reality of what you actually _will_ look like, in another five or ten years, after your final growth spurt and all that? Heck, who knows how long it will take Trigon's half-breed daughter to reach full maturity, or how much might yet change along the way there?_ She squashed the thought quickly; if she ever got obsessively optimistic about superficial appearances, there was no telling what depravities she might indulge in. She might end up borrowing fashion magazines from Starfire, and mastering the intricacies of dozens of different ways to apply makeup, and experimenting with a wide range of hairstyles, and perhaps even learning how to flirt with boys _as if_ she were a normal human girl who wanted a real boyfriend and thought she could handle it safely if she ever actually got one. (Her powers, heavily affected by emotional fluctuations, made that prospect too hazardous. Only once had she really dared to hope otherwise, and that had blown up in her face.)

Starfire's statue looked similarly mature and at least as beautiful, if not more so, albeit in a warm and caring sort of way, but that was a lot easier for Raven to accept as a serious possibility for the future; Star had _always_ looked great and it stood to reason that in a few more years she might look even better. (Well, "always looked great" _except_ during that strange Tamaranean metamorphosis she had experienced last year, but it hadn't lasted long.)

Robin's statue made him look quite a bit taller in his maturity, even allowing for the fact it was about four times as tall as the real boy at the moment, and gave him features resembling Tom Cruise. Still wearing something very close to the authentic Robin costume, though. (Perhaps the whole "Nightwing" thing only happened in that alternate future where Starfire had been absent for a solid twenty years?)

Cyborg's statue was perhaps the least recognizable. His metal body parts had a lot more spikes and other eye-catching paraphernalia extruding from them than Cyborg normally had in reality, and somehow the sculptor hadn't even known that Cyborg's scalp and jaw never had any visible hair showing. (Of course, Raven reluctantly conceded as an afterthought, it was possible that her friend would choose to stop shaving the flesh-and-blood parts of his head, someday.)

Efim's insistence that Raven and her friends _couldn't possibly_ be the "real" Teen Titans was starting to make more sense. Aside from the exaggerated legends he'd referred to, there were also these statues to firmly embed certain images of the Five in his head. He'd probably stood in this Plaza a thousand times; he must be conditioned to think of the statues as absolutely reliable representations of the deities he believed in, even if no authority figures had ever explicitly told him the statues were guaranteed to be accurate! (He hadn't tagged along with them today when they left the campus, so she couldn't ask him about that right now, even if she'd had time to spare for such a discussion.)

The other Titans were all scrutinizing the statues as well. Nobody was being foolish enough to say anything, in such a public place in broad daylight, regarding what details the sculptor had gotten wrong. It would have raised too many awkward questions. (Okay, so there was one possible exception. Beast Boy's first reaction, a minute ago, had been: "Whoa! I can't believe that's—", but then Robin had clapped a hand over his mouth just to be on the safe side, beating Raven to it by a hair.) Eventually Robin said, "Only a few minutes left before the appointment, people!"

The Titans turned and looked at the Sibyl's Residence. The large front yard was separated from the main plaza by wrought iron fencing; lots of vertical bars too close together for a thief to squeeze through, but thin enough that you could get a good view of the things inside. There were two armed men just inside the front gate; they both wore red-and-green uniforms, and carried things that looked like assault rifles. Not that Raven was any expert on the nitpicking details of all the different types of firearms that people had invented throughout the ages. There was also a dog, not leashed but staying close to the guards; Raven thought it was a German Shepherd, but she was no great dog lover either, so she couldn't be sure. (It didn't help that most dogs tended to keep a wary distance from her after catching a whiff of her half-demon scent. Not that she could blame them!)

Robin leaned over and whispered in Raven's ear, "Remember—use your communicator if you really need us. If she's even half as powerful as they say, she'll figure out you're a real Titan pretty darn quick. At that point . . . who knows? She might see us as a scary threat to her precious status quo, and then panic."

"I thought of that too," Raven whispered back. "But I doubt she can stop me from sliding right through the walls, if worse comes to worst."

Carrying a burlap bag, Raven walked forward until she was just one pace short of the gate and then said to the guards, "Hello, I have an appointment with the Sibyl, in the name of Nevar."

"Right," the guard on the left said. "Are you carrying any weapons, explosives, poisons?"

"None of the above," Raven said truthfully. The guard on the right nodded to his companion, and then pulled the gate open. Raven studied the man's aura as best she could and decided the guard on the right probably had the same sort of training as the Rector; enough to spot a lie at close range. That was a trick Raven had never learned . . . she wondered if it was purely a matter of training, or did a person need to have exactly the right genetic potential to learn that particular trick.

The dog sniffed at her a bit and then backed away on its own. The guards seemed satisfied; obviously the dog hadn't done whatever it was trained to do when an alarm was called for. Such as when it smelled explosives, probably? Something a guest might carry without knowing it; concealed in footgear, for instance, by an assassin who wouldn't be within a mile of the Sibyl's Residence when it was time for the kaboom? That would be one way to slip a bomb right past a "human lie detector," so it made sense to have a backup test. Raven suddenly wondered how many Sibyls had been assassinated during the Faith of the Five's history, but shelved the question for later research. Asking the guards about it, right here and now, seemed inadvisable.

Except for the dog's nose for a moment, no one actually touched Raven the rest of the way to her appointment. She was directed to go up to the front door of the large house. (The two guards stayed put by the gate.) As she stepped up to the front porch, the door was opened by a man in a tuxedo who was probably a butler, whether they called it that or something else. He was flanked by two more uniformed guards, one of whom said, "Follow me," and headed up the staircase while his companion stayed just inside the front door as the butler closed it.

They reached the landing at the head of the stairs, and then the guard moved to the left, along a wall that had portraits of previous Sibyls. Raven noted in passing that the First Sybil, Cenobia, had worn her blond hair very long, but she couldn't take the time to study the other portraits in any detail.

Finally the guard stopped in front of a door that was already ajar, poked his head in for a moment, then stepped back and to the side and nodded to Raven. This was it. Raven nodded back—then, three paces short of the door to the Sibyl's office, she paused just long enough to pulled her hooded cloak out of a bag and put it on properly. She was darn well going to _look like_ Raven of the Titans when she confronted the Sibyl who supposedly worshipped her and encouraged lots of other people to do the same. It probably wasn't the most tactful way to dress when meeting a religious leader who must be very skeptical of her guest's self-identification, but what the heck, if Robin thought tact would be _important_ in this interview then he should have known better than to drop such a heavy hint that _Raven_ should "volunteer" to carry the flag for the team.

The guard seemed surprised at Raven's appearance now that she was wearing her cloak with the hood pulled up, but he must have been well-trained; he didn't say a word. Raven raised her chin and strode right past him into the office. Then she saw Sibyl Barabel (it had to be her; strong psychic waves filled the air around her) and froze. Distantly, Raven wondered if her face was hiding her shock at the Sibyl's choice of wardrobe. (One thing about living in Titans Tower for a couple of years—you got lots and lots of practice at dealing with bizarre surprises.)

Sibyl Barabel was standing beside a massive desk, and she was dressed in something that _strongly _resembled the white outfit Raven had once worn when she _thought_ the sweet-spoken Malchior had given her a new outlook on life—the primary difference being that the Sibyl wore a white dress with a full skirt under the white hooded cloak, instead of just a leotard that would have left her bare-legged, as Raven was.

The hood was thrown back and the Sibyl's face looked a bit younger than Raven had expected—mid-thirties, perhaps? About double Raven's biological age, with light brown hair and a straight nose.

The Sibyl waved a hand at the guard who was now framed in the doorway (as Raven confirmed with a quick glance). "Leave us." The man moved away quietly and Raven barely heard the door click shut as he closed it from the hallway.

The lady in white met Raven's eyes and said simply, "I am Barabel, Sibyl of the Faith of the Five."

"I am Raven, of the Teen Titans."

"Well, that gets us right to the point, doesn't it? I know you believe that—are you willing to prove it?"

Raven gave the Sibyl her best inscrutable gaze and asked, "Are you willing to prove that you actually lead your faith by virtue of divine revelation?"

"Do I _need_ to prove anything to you?" the Sibyl inquired, not sounding offended in the least. "The followers of the Faith have benefited many times from the visions and other revelations Sibyls receive from the Five—mine since I was called to serve as Sibyl, and a great many of my various predecessors'. The many members of our Faith would say they have numerous good reasons to believe, stretching back seven centuries. If _you_ don't care to believe that the Five have long since ascended to divinity and now guide their Sibyls when it pleases them, no one will hold a gun to your head and force you to mouth platitudes you don't really mean. We are not _frightened_ by others' disbelief; we only _pity_ it. In other words, young lady, I don't know that I really need anything from you and your friends—but I gather, from what my old friend the Rector said to me, that you think you need a great deal from me, if it is within my power to help you return to your alleged native era."

Raven had anticipated this general line of argument; the Sibyl was trying to establish dominance right away. "We both know why I'm here. You already have one trained psychic's word for it that we aren't just charlatans trying to make a quick buck. Now the only way to find out if I'm the genuine article, or someone who's been programmed to think so, is to probe deeply into my mind and see if all the proper memories are where they belong. If you find that I've been thinking of myself as 'Raven' just for the last week or two, and practically everything before that contradicts that idea—or is completely sealed off behind barriers—that will mean I need some serious therapy. Fine! I'm ready to risk that.

"But before we get into each other's heads, it's only fair to make sure we both understand some ground rules. If I am the real Raven, then you'll quickly find my training in Azarath left me ready to give as good as I get in any conjunction of our minds. Which means that when I satisfy _your_ curiosity, I'm also going to satisfy _mine_ and find out if you're really sincere about this cushy job you have as 'Sibyl.' If you're wondering if I'm part of a fancy scheme to take advantage of other people's sincere beliefs, then let me warn you up front that the suspicion is _mutual_."

Suddenly the Sibyl smiled broadly. "Believe it or not—and it looks like you'll know the truth in just a minute or two, anyway—I will be just as happy if we both find we can trust each other's claims. Please don't misunderstand my position! I have not already made up my mind about you! I have read enough surviving records of the heyday of superheroes, from the Twentieth and early Twenty-First centuries by the old reckoning, to know that time travel used to be . . . well, if not commonplace, then at least not unheard of. There's no remaining record that says the Five, in their mortal days, ever traveled several centuries forward to this era, but then there's no remaining record that categorically states they didn't! How would one go about proving a negative?"

She raised her left hand. "I propose physical contact to make it easier to form the bond. Each of us touches the other's head simultaneously, and then—whatever else happens—we'll understand each other a lot better, won't we? I am ready. Is there anything else you feel you should say before the decisive test of 'good faith'?"

"Nothing springs to mind," Raven said, pushing back her own hood. "We've got to do this sooner or later, or else my friends and I might as well try to cut a deal with S.T.A.R. Labs and hope we catch their leaders in a generous mood. Which we'd really rather not do," she added diplomatically, stepping forward across the deep carpet to meet the Sibyl in the middle of the room. Hands passed each other in the air, fingertips touched foreheads lightly, Raven dropped most of her psychic shields for the first time today (while keeping some secrets in reserve), and then . . .

_Contact._


	10. Chapter 10: A Tour Through Raven's Mind

**Author's Note:** Raven and Sibyl Barabel are currently mind melding (as they would call it in _Star Trek_). Raven is still the viewpoint character here, but since the Sibyl's mind is currently wandering around inside hers, any paragraph that represents the Sibyl's thoughts directed at Raven will be rendered in italics to differentiate from the things Raven is thinking, doing, perceiving, etc. Please note that an occasional _word_ or _phrase_ in italics is not the Sibyl's thoughts intruding upon Raven's. Entire paragraphs in that font, however, definitely are Barabel's comments as she rummages through Raven's memories. (A few of Raven's thoughts that are aimed directly at Barabel are rendered as regular dialogue in quotation marks, even though no one is speaking those words aloud.)

We won't be visiting Nevermore this time around, however. I regard Nevermore as the way a visitor will perceive Raven's mind after entering it _via her magic mirror_. But the magic mirror is nowhere in sight in this story; and besides, Barabel isn't interested in meeting Raven's personified emotions one by one; just establishing that Raven has a Timid and a Brave and a Happy, etc., wouldn't prove a thing about whether or not this Raven is really the _same_ Raven who was a founding member of the Titans.

* * *

**Chapter Ten: A Tour Through Raven's Mind**

Vision blanked, hearing faded out, touch became irrelevant. Raven was no longer consciously aware of her body's surroundings; there was only the pale yellow glow of the Sibyl's mind moving through the periphery of Raven's own mental processes, smoothly, delicately, warily; looking for the key to unlock various memories, while keeping a figurative eye peeled for any trace of a psychic ambush about to be launched. The only hint of the physical world that remained in Raven's conscious perceptions was the throb of her own heartbeat.

_One beat_, and Raven knew she would have her work cut out for her if the psychic contact with the Sibyl became a relentless contest of their respective willpowers and psychic training; _two beats_, and Raven became reasonably confident that Sibyl Barabel did not _want_ such a clash any more than she did; _three beats_, and the Sibyl had completed a cursory scan to double-check that Raven really believed she was a Teen Titan; _four beats_, and the Sibyl glanced at some of Raven's _detailed_ memories of American culture from the early Twenty-First Century to verify that they were more than a modern girl might have learned from a few old books; _five beats_, and Barabel went plunging far down into the oldest coherent memories in Raven's brain. . . .

_Come closer to me, my compeer, my forerunner; come and show me how you lived, if and when you were a child in Azarath. _

Azarath-that-was, peaceful, beautiful, bright city built on the flat top of a huge chunk of rock that floated in the void, deliberately constructed in the middle of nowhere (with more literal truth in that cliché than you'd encounter anywhere on the planet Earth), almost impossible to find unless you already knew exactly where you were going . . . Raven invoked a memory of how the whole city appeared if you backed off far enough to see it all at once, and now the Sibyl superimposed her own image of what the city looked like from that same angle in happy days before Trigon (accursed-be-his-name) reached out to crush it, and the two images matched almost perfectly; someone who knew must have shown Barabel a true vision of the city in its prime, so many centuries ago now . . . a surviving Azarathian, unknown to Raven, who somehow escaped to another plane of reality when Trigon's wrath descended?

_Shown? Not to me directly, young lady, but to the First Sibyl of the Faith. And not a surviving child of Azarath, but a dead one, who had already ascended from mortality to divinity. Cenobia dreamed of Azarath, dreams drawn from the memories of the Queen of Air and Darkness who was born there, nurtured there, and never forgot. And the memories of those dreams have been handed down through the generations; they are part of the legacy my predecessor and I have shared with current members of the Conclave, and someday I or they will in turn impart them to my own successor. I have _never_ met anyone outside the Faith who had such accurate knowledge of Azarath's glory that was, at least when seen from the outside; show me the depth of your own knowledge; show me the interior of the great central tower. _

Raven flashed through memories of the vast library, the classrooms, the kitchens, the infirmary, the Grand Assembly; all the places required for the nerve center of a city that was essentially one huge school plus necessary housing and other bits of support structure. Barabel kept up with her, matching most of those memories with imagery from the mental files of the Sibyls; discrepancies were minor and (in Raven's expert opinion) entirely attributable to the slight corruption of data that was bound to happen across several generations of mental downloading without any opportunity for Sibyls to visit Azarath themselves and update their knowledge of the details.

_Perish the thought that your own memories might be inaccurate enough to account for any of the mismatches we observe now. But I agree in principle—the variations are small, the similarities overwhelming; neither of us is using false memories based on anyone's best guess of how the true Azarath _might_ have appeared. You are certainly strengthening your case. I am virtually convinced that you once lived in Azarath in a past age. But surely many thousands of people did the same. Are you the Raven of legend? Let us look at your father. _

Trigon. Four-eyed, red-skinned, usually-gigantic demon-lord, with the sort of egocentric approach to world conquest—one world after another—that made Genghis Khan look like an insecure wimp frantically pretending he knew how to be ruthless. (The Great Khan's armies only caused the deaths of an estimated _ten percent_ of the human population of that era—Trigon would have called that "going very easy on them.")

_Yes, I see. Trigon sits on your second home, the T-shaped tower he has turned into a throne. His four eyes see anything it occurs to him to gaze upon; following the transition to this world, he is letting his strength rebuild before he reaches out to grasp everything at once. You have long known that he would use you as a portal when he could, and you believed that if he made it through into this world, it was all over but the shouting. Definitely the worst day of your life when he finally arrived. Although that later became the best day of your life after your friends showed you he wasn't quite so invincible as you'd already known/believed/dreaded, and you were finally able to somehow purge him from the world forever. _

A fleeting thought occurred to Raven—something odd about her own previous assumption of Trigon's ultimate success if and when he got the ball rolling in an invasion of Earth—but she tabled the idea for later consideration. Barabel either didn't notice or didn't care.

_Now let us examine the four who co-founded the Teen Titans with you._

_I see them through your eyes—your friends, your kith; Robin, a credit to his mentor's training, and having at least five times the leadership skills of that surly man who hunkers in a cave half the time; Cyborg, who bears up incredibly well when so much of him is cold metal and plastic—you doubt you could handle it half as well if you lost so much of your own flesh; Starfire, the light-hearted sister you wish you'd had when you were so much smaller and desperately needed one; Beast Boy, the overzealous clown who—roughly once in a blue moon—shows enough sensitivity to make you think he might actually remember to finish growing up . . . some day . . . but you aren't holding your breath waiting for it. _

_Moving on from general impressions to specific moments, as seen through your own eyes and ears and feelings:_

_Cyborg storms off after a vicious quarrel with Robin, and when Starfire wants to __commiserate with you, you pretend you're so stoical you don't much care about an occasional Titan deciding to strike out on his own . . . but an entire bank of monitors suddenly needs to be replaced, for some odd reason._

_Much later: You are standing near Starfire as she is introduced to her betrothed, Glrdlesklechhh, whom she has never met before in her life. At first glance, you know he is not of the same species; not even a "cousin species" such as you conjecture humans and Tamaraneans might be. Looks like a pile of green glop with odd little appendages radiating out from all sides of his body. Telling "little white lies" for tactful purposes has never exactly been one of your strengths, but for Starfire's sake, bearing in mind that all the way here she has been bound and determined to accept whatever mate her lawful ruler has chosen for her and presumably her strong sense of duty won't let her back down now, you make a rare effort and manage to force the words out: "Um . . . he's cute." _

_Much later: You're small and powerless, falling toward a river of lava, and Robin _reflexively_ throws himself off the face of the cliff after you, gambling on his ability to catch you in midair and then contrive a rescue before you_ both_ get fried. You've already given up on any hope of ever beating Trigon, and you reflect, rather bitterly, that this boy has some seriously messed-up "reflexes," jeopardizing his own life that way for a girl who has nothing left to live for. Rather than risk a lava bath, the sensible thing would have been to cling tightly to handholds on the cliff, shed a tear, and say, "Alas, poor Raven, I knew her well." (But then, if Robin wanted to be sensible he wouldn't be Robin in the first place, would he?) _

_Several minutes later (after you've finally expelled your father from your life forever): Beast Boy gets seriously worried about whether you're really the same Raven he remembers. You're actually smiling, for one thing, and giving Robin a quick hug of gratitude, for another. You quickly do your best to assuage your green friend's fears by insulting him. Greatly reassured by this evidence of a return to normalcy, he pounces and hugs you. Something he normally wouldn't dare to attempt. You make a token effort to tell him to quit, but you don't actually use telekinesis to push him off right away. _

This was very awkward, reliving those moments with a stranger watching it through her eyes and offering commentary, but Raven comforted herself with the thought that after the Titans got back home to their native era, it never would have happened. Barabel, she knew, heard _that_ thought too, but seemed mildly amused and didn't comment on it at all.

_Show me some of the other villains you have fought since forming the team. Ah, yes . . . now I see them. . . ._

_Control Freak, who thinks the world's a television show and he's the new producer who should have veto power over each script; Mumbo, who somehow works magical effects that even you don't always understand; Mad Mod, master of illusion, who feels that whole "free will" nonsense is vastly overrated when everyone can just have an exaggerated version of British culture forced down their throats instead; Kyd Wykkyd of the Hive Five, who has enough in common with you to make you very uncomfortable when you let yourself speculate about his paternity; and Slade, whose "return from the dead," totally unanticipated by you, made you wonder if the cheerful influences of other Titans were beginning to corrupt your usual thought patterns with a _dangerous_ degree of optimism, for how else could you explain your failure to consider such a worst-case scenario as Trigon striking a deal with him. _

Raven finally dug in her mental heels and thought: _"_Even at the speeds at which thoughts can race around in the human brain (well, a _half_-human brain in my case), it would still take an awfully long time to review my _entire_ life story. Have you seen enough hand-picked samples to satisfy you of the depth and texture of my experiences, as you rummaged around for any subject that caught your fancy without my trying to steer you away from problem areas? Lots of authentic memories, dating back to Late Twentieth/Early Twenty-First Century, childhood in Azarath, strong ties with the other Titans, fighting Trigon, fighting others, all in colorful detail? You haven't mentioned finding any mysterious gaps or stitching jobs, as if someone had cut-and-pasted manufactured memories (or stolen ones?) into my head to replace the authentic ones of the life and times of some other girl who never called herself Raven until someone started doing a real number inside her head in order to make her a genuine sincere ersatz version.

A mental sigh from Barabel. _Very well. You are correct; your head is full of fascinating things that could answer many historical questions, but if I have not yet found any proof that you are someone else brainwashed to recite certain claims and remember certain scenes, then I doubt I ever shall. I now believe you are the mortal incarnation of Raven of the original Teen Titans, come forward in time unintentionally; as I suggested before, there is nothing in the Faith's theology that absolutely precludes that notion; it's merely very surprising. Are we done, then?_

"Only half," Raven projected. "Your own bona fides still need to be established. Your mind doesn't radiate an aura of pure evil, but then, most people's don't. They always think they have good reasons for the things they do to other people. Blackfire didn't feel guilty about how she treated her sister. I warned you up front that I will give you the same sort of scrutiny you gave me."

_Yes, you did. I _think_ I only meant "Are we done in _your_ mind?" Though I admit I am not wildly eager about having the shoe on the other foot, but I have experienced it before and shall live with it now, as you will live with this. And if you are the real Raven—which I suppose you are—then you already know it all anyway, in a matter of speaking. Your deified future self does, that is to say. So why should I kick and scream in a futile effort to prevent you from seeing the things you already know about me?_

"I'm still having serious trouble with that part," Raven communicated. "But I'll try to keep an open mind while I see what the Faith of the Five, and its patron gods and goddesses, look like from your perspective. Ready or not, here I come!"


	11. Chapter 11: The Path to the Sibyl's Seat

**Author's Note:** Okay, okay, so it's been a good long while since I last added anything to this serial (last fall, in fact!). Of course, I haven't _completely neglected_ our beloved Titans during that interval . . . I've posted two installments of a lengthy poem about Beast Boy asking Raven on a date, and also a humorous short story with Control Freak showing his usual (lack of) savoir faire. Now that I'm posting this new chapter in here, I'll switch back to the poem ("Quoth Our Raven"), on the theory that any new readers I attract will follow me back and forth (I'm an optimist!), and after posting another installment of that, I'll switch back to this serial again, and then finally wrap up the poem in its fourth installment—I once thought I'd make it in three, but that isn't working out. On the plus side, most of the remaining stanzas have already been written!

* * *

**Chapter Eleven: The Path to the Sibyl's Seat**

"Come and show me how you live, my putative disciple, my apparent worshipper; show me how you rose to this high office. I care not for your romances, your childhood secrets, your hobbies and your diets, except as they relate to the matter at hand. Show me what has become your life's work, your career, your duty; show me an inside view of the Faith of the Five." (Thus did Raven express herself telepathically, in an effort to be properly formal for the occasion, as her consciousness began to insinuate itself into the memories of Sibyl Barabel's mind.)

The Sibyl was admirably cooperative; she pointed out various memories of "noteworthy" moments in her life, but didn't kick and scream when Raven, testing, poked her figurative psychic nose into other memories at random intervals just to see if anything inconsistent with the "significant" ones was lurking behind a screen. Raven could have spent dozens of hours delving through the recollections of a so-called "spiritual leader" of the Faith of the Five and rationalized it as necessary and enlightening research, but she didn't. Later, Raven would remember the following as some of the "highlights" which she had explored in more depth than other things she'd skimmed through.

_Age five_, and little Barabel was memorizing passages from the writings of Cenobia, the First Sibyl; Raven lingered in these memories just long enough to see that, at the time, Barabel already believed the doctrines her mother was teaching her. Full of questions, though—always looking at a rule and then trying to think of exceptions and worst-case scenarios and asking, "But what if—?" Her mother, evidently a very patient woman, never ordered her to just shut up and take it all faith, but always had a reasonably satisfying answer for what rules would presumably apply in any given set of circumstances.

_Age thirteen_, and schoolgirl Barabel was tested with Zener cards. The results were interesting enough that other tests followed in quick succession, and then she was put into special training to develop her nascent psychic abilities to their fullest. Although she was cautioned to avoid letting her ego get swollen—and _hoped_ she managed to abide by that stricture—she quickly realized she was inherently stronger in these disciplines than at least ninety-five percent of the other potential psychics in her age group. Her education in other areas was not neglected, but it was clear that even if she had never studied a mundane subject again, she still would have been able to make a very comfortable living with any of several possible employers after graduating.

_Age sixteen_, and Barabel, still a student, volunteered to be trained for the priesthood. The result was a lengthy private interview with the venerable Sibyl Cocheta, eighty-eight years old if she was a day, and looking every minute of it, but with a mind as sharp as ever. Just the regular question-and-answer portion of the interview was enough to make Barabel feel as if her soul were being peeled back, one layer at a time, so the Sibyl could get a better look at the core of things with her penetrating black eyes. Their _minds_ only touched briefly, toward the end, but the experience was enough to persuade Barabel that it was a very, very, very good thing she hadn't tried to conceal any nasty ulterior motives in her petition for clerical training.

Raven paused in her chronological travels to probe further for background material on the nature of this career path. Male and female alike could qualify for the priesthood. Many of those who were accepted were not psychically gifted, and psychic and nonpsychic alike could rise as far as having seats in the Conclave (always at the discretion of the serving Sibyl). But ever since the First Sybil had died, the tradition had been that only an anointed _priestess_ who was also a trained psychic could hope to become Sibyl herself. (For reasons known only to the Five, a male Sibyl was a contradiction in terms.) Chastity was required of all the clergy; celibacy was not. (In other words: You could get married and still be a priest or priestess, as long as you set a proper example of moral behavior. On this subject, the Sibyls traditionally enforced a policy of "one strike and you're out.") Several Sibyls had been married. Barabel herself was descended from two Sibyls through different branches of her family tree, but so were thousands of other people. Cocheta had been no relation of Barabel's, and vague connections to Sibyls who had been dead for centuries hadn't resulted in Barabel getting an easy ride from her teachers and superiors. (Often the exact opposite! They seemed to feel that a girl with her potential ought to work harder than the average recruit, to be all that she could be!)

_Age eighteen_, and Acolyte Barabel was assigned to help evacuate a small town located very near the epicenter-to-be of an upcoming earthquake. Sibyl Cocheta gave almost three weeks' notice of its coming, and the town was completely empty with a week to spare. Barabel was one of the psychics who did the final sweep for any stubborn stragglers who might be hiding in attics or cellars; she didn't find any. After several centuries of experience, _every_ child who grew up in or near the Commonwealth, including those whose families were not of the Faith, knew perfectly well that when a sitting Sibyl prophecied a certain disaster would occur in a certain place in a certain timeframe, it meant the aforementioned disaster would occur exactly as described. The secular government was legally separate from the clerical hierarchy of the Faith, but any high official who failed to act quickly on such a warning from a Sibyl would have quickly been sacked, and possibly faced criminal charges for dereliction of duty verging on treason against the public weal. (Ignoring such warnings, and then trying to explain your reasoning to furious citizenry, had happened twice in the early days of the Commonwealth—once with regard to a tidal wave; once when a prophecy of military invasion in the near future was greeted with official disbelief until word came that the first shots had been fired.)

_Age twenty_, and Junior Priestess Barabel was on loan to the Madisonian Commonwealth's Foreign Ministry as a truth-senser attached to a diplomatic mission to the city-state of Blue Valley. During her time there, a site just west of the Lord Mayor's Palace was attacked by a robotic strike force from S.T.A.R. It turned out that Blue Valley had been secretly building a subterranean factory to create integrated circuits—"little ones," the Lord Mayor later said, "no more than two thousand transistors apiece"—working from some old texts about the early days of computer science, long before the mortal incarnations of the Five. But S.T.A.R. either had known about this all along or had suddenly found out before the work was quite complete; the heavily armored robots gave the staff of the facility a ten-minute warning to evacuate it, and then set off explosives which probably destroyed the crucial equipment and certainly caused the earthen "ceilings" to cave in, burying everything amidst tons and tons of rock and dirt. Two guards emptied their rifles shooting at some of the robots (despite orders to the contrary); there was no violent response because none of their bullets did much more than scratch the paint.

_Age twenty-three_, and Junior Priestess Barabel became Senior Priestess Barabel concomitant with her being admitted to a seat in the Conclave of the Faith; young for such a responsibility, but not unprecedented; Sibyls made their own decisions on such matters (or harkened to the wishes of one or more of the Five, but who could say whether that was the case in any single decision if the Sibyl did not care to comment on why she was doing what she did?).

_Age twenty-six_, and Sibyl Cocheta died quietly, in her sleep—not surprising when her own age was ninety-eight, although some had thought her too stubborn to quit anywhere short of a full century. Then—and here was the part Raven found particularly hard to swallow as she swam through this pool of memory—Barabel dreamed a dream that same night, before anyone had informed her of Cocheta's passing; a dream in which the goddess Raven, Queen of Air and Darkness, pronounced her choice of Barabel as the next designated spokeswoman standing between deities and mortals; the Sibyl at the apex of the Faith's clerical hierarchy. Barabel remembered it vividly when she awoke, but a fear of appearing arrogant—as well as a certain lack of enthusiasm for trying to fill Cocheta's shoes any time soon—prevented her from raising the subject herself when all those members of the Conclave who were currently in Vision (enough for a quorum) met the following afternoon to speak of finding Cocheta's successor. Barabel rapidly learned that her reluctance to speak would not make the slightest difference in the outcome. Several members, psychics and nonpsychics alike, stood to describe what was, in essence, the same dream! After the will of the Five had become _excruciatingly_ clear, Barabel reluctantly conceded that she too had dreamed of Raven summoning her to higher duty, but had feared (or hoped?) it might be, or seem to be, her own subconscious acting up in a particularly egotistical spasm. (The younger Raven who was now examining these memories could see that the reluctance was unfeigned.)

Raven frowned a figurative frown, backed up, and zeroed in on that dream-experience. The woman (goddess?) in the dream had her hood up, but the lower portion of her face looked quite a bit like the chin and mouth and jaw Raven saw in the mirror on a regular basis, and the voice seemed about right . . . in an older-and-wiser-and-not-so-monotonic sort of way . . . of course, a sufficiently powerful psychic (or magic-user) could have caused her own mental projection to look and sound like anything she pleased as she intruded in Barabel's dreams . . .

_There have been other visions,_ Barabel said helpfully, _although that was the first that I am certain was a real sending from on high and not just a random dream. Do you want to examine the later ones?_

"Briefly," Raven said, and started skipped ahead, dropping into random moments of Barabel's life in the nine years since her ascension to Sibylhood. Other visions, of "Raven" and sometimes of others of the Five; none of them undeniably authentic future versions of the Titans to Raven's jaundiced mental eye, but none of them obviously fraudulent, either. Between times: Glimpses of Barabel's own thought processes as she interviewed psychic applicants for clerical training, dealt with government officials, reviewed accusations of severe misconduct against priests and priestesses, consulted with the Conclave and assigned new duties to some of its members, read news reports from across the continent and sometimes beyond, and attended to the many details which could swamp the leader of any sizeable organization. Conspicuous by its absence was any significant tendency toward greed or hypocrisy; Barabel actually believed in her calling . . . .even if she would have been happy to see someone else selected for the honor . . . and evidently lived by the same rules of virtuous conduct which she urged all the other members of the Faith to follow to the letter. Raven had already suspected as much, but it had seemed perfectly possible that a woman who became Sibyl might _then_ learn faith-damaging secrets she had never guessed at when she was just another priestess. It hadn't happened, though.

"Thank you—I've got enough to satisfy my needs, and any more of this browsing would just be sheer snoopiness," Raven finally said in a place that was not a place, as she stepped away from Barabel (without really moving a muscle) and prepared to break the contact which had allowed them to tour each other's psyches. "Time to disengage, and then we can talk things over normally." Raven focused her thoughts on the physical fingertips that must have been resting against the Sibyl's forehead in the "real" world all this time, and sent out the signal to tug her hand back, just as Barabel was presumably doing the same.

_Severance._

* * *

**Author's Note:** Coming up next: We finally see Starfire's point of view for the first time in this serial, as she and Cyborg explore whatever remains of the underground complex formerly known as Fixit's lair, way back in the early 21st Century. I'll warn you right now that Fixit is _not_ sitting down there waiting for them to show up; he's presumably long dead by now. Nonetheless, the two explorers will end up finding some interesting things! (Otherwise, why would I bother giving their expedition its own chapter?) Incidentally, I think the next couple of chapters will have noticeably more humor than these last few have exhibited. I know I chose to label this "Drama/Humor" way back when, but lately it's been long on the Drama and short on the Humor. It's about time for the pendulum to swing back the other way for a bit, in keeping with the absurdity of the basic premise of this serial.


	12. Chapter 12: Voice from the Darkness

**Author's Note: **Starfire finally gets to be the viewpoint character for the first time in this serial. I'll probably give Beast Boy his second round in the spotlight in the next chapter.

* * *

**Chapter Twelve: Voice from the Darkness**

**A former junkyard, in the ruins of what was once Jump City  
****The Madisonian Commonwealth  
****Calculated date: 5 June 2771 C.E.  
****2:09 PM**

Starfire let her friend drop the last few feet onto the grass; then rubbed her shoulders. Cyborg was still wearing his holographic guise as a young man of normal flesh and blood, but that didn't make his metal portions any lighter if you had to carry him. Starfire had flown them both most of the way here—once they had jogged out to some trees at the edge of Vision and flying close to the ground could be done with little fear of anyone else getting a really good look—and she was glad to finally be able to put him down. She could have transported that much weight for _considerably_ longer if need be, but her joints wouldn't have been thrilled by the experience.

Both of them had avoided verbal speculation on what, exactly, might be happening in Raven's interview with the Sibyl. Starfire suspected Cyborg was considerably more pessimistic about the subject than she was, but thus far there had been no urgent messages coming through on their communicators. From conversation with Raven before they had drifted off to sleep the night before, Starfire gathered that Raven (and probably the other Titans) were working on the assumption that this whole "Faith of the Five" thing had to rest upon a falsehood somehow—although even its current generation of leaders might not know that. Starfire was unclear on why her friends had jumped to such a conclusion. Everyone knew X'Hal had been a mortal woman who (accidentally) ascended to divinity, so why couldn't it happen again? All right, it was true that what "everyone knew" on Tamaran was not necessarily what "everyone knew" on Earth, but even if her friends were ignorant of the details of X'Hal's glorious and tragic history, surely they ought to realize that such changes were _possible_. . . .

Not that Starfire had ever expected it to happen to her, nor to anyone she knew. And she did wonder why, if the five of them had made the leap to divinity, their "divine selves" of this century were not lending a helping hand to their own younger selves in order to help them return to when they belonged? Of course, it was always possible that the "divine selves" distinctly remembered having experienced everything the younger Titans were now experiencing on this trip through time, and knew it would all turn out well without any overt divine intervention being required . . . but Starfire had kept these thoughts to herself during the trip here, and Cyborg had not felt like making much small talk either.

He was still grousing a bit about the total absence of GPS signals in this century, but Starfire knew perfectly well he didn't really need them for a little thing like finding a known location in the ruins of Jump City. He could still take a bearing on the hulk of the Tower and calculate it from there with the maps he had in storage. Indeed, once they were in the right "neighborhood," it had only taken a minute for them to find what Cyborg swore had been the exact spot.

Starfire believed him, but she had to take it on faith; the place had changed too much for any sense of familiarity. Things had crumbled. Things had been overgrown. Most of what she now saw was covered with dirt and plant life. There weren't nearly so many tall piles of worn-out metallic objects as she remembered. Hardly any, in fact!

Cyborg offered the opinion that somewhere along the line someone had probably scavenged the larger chunks of metal to melt down and reuse. After a few minutes of pacing back and forth, muttering to himself, he said: "Okay, Star, I think the main entrance was right about _here_, where this crater is. The roof must have caved in over this area where it was only a few feet thick, back in the day. Could be a bomb knocked it down; could be hundreds of years of weather and the occasional earthquake. No tunnel entrances showing, but the way I remember it, the main tunnel slanted downward going . . . that way." He pointed off to their left. "Star—can you go high for a minute and see if there's any sign of a very long, shallow trench, going that way? These things aren't always obvious to the guy on the ground."

Starfire knew what he meant. She ascended a few hundred feet. She zipped back and forth across the area where the tunnel ought to be, then swooped back down near Cyborg and told him there was _no sign_ of such a long, straight line, neither elevated nor depressed.

"Bingo! That probably means most of the tunnel is still there, instead of collapsing—or being blasted down—all the way."

Starfire asked, "Why did you think anyone would have done all that destruction?"

Cyborg said, "Could've been good reasons. Enemies could have done it from up here, to try to bury Fixit alive without going down within range of his main defenses. Or Fixit could have sealed himself in to make it that much _harder_ for any bandits on the surface to ever make it down to raid his equipment. He was pretty self-sufficient down there—he might figure he could sit tight for a quick decade or three until things were settled on the surface."

"Oh yes!" Starfire said nostalgically. "Had he not been completely away from the sunlight for a horribly long time before we met him?" (She still didn't understand how any thinking person could ever prefer such a ghastly situation, although at least Fixit had finally realized his error on the same day they met.)

"That's what he said—but of course he still monitored things in the junkyard; that's how he found me. Anyway, Star, I figure if we both stand over here—" Cyborg moved, "—and aim downward at that angle—" he had his sonic cannon ready for action now, "—and blast together at where the mouth of the tunnel oughta be, then we might actually clear a path P.D.Q. and be able to check up on what's left further down!"

Starfire drifted down till her feet touched the grass a few paces to Cyborg's right, extended her arms toward the same point Cyborg was already aiming at, and said, "I am ready whenever you say, Friend Cyborg!"

"Let 'er rip!"

Starbolts and highly focused sound hammered into the target area. For a moment Starfire let herself think of how much quicker this would have been if Terra were present—and if she were inclined to cooperate; a whole different assumption—but then she brushed the sad thought aside. There was nothing to be done for Terra here and now.

"Hold it!" Cyborg finally called. "There's a lot less dirt being kicked up now. I think our shots are sailing right through a hole and on down the tunnel!"

They stopped and let the dust cloud settle. It rapidly became clear that Cyborg had a point. He blasted a few spots around the edges to widen the entrance, and then they were ready to go.

Starfire was not wildly happy about heading down into dark unpleasant places full of who-knew-what nastiness . . . but after a few years as a Titan, she was definitely _accustomed _to it. Villainous masterminds were always building secret lairs in such places, in order to avoid being detected before their nefarious schemes were ready to be implemented. She conceded that Fixit hadn't been all that bad even before his change of heart the day the Titans met him—just exceptionally reclusive and a bit biased against flesh-and-blood lifestyles—but there was no telling who might have moved in after he was gone.

Cyborg crawled through the hole they had made and then stood up when there was room for his height and shoulders. Starfire zipped through the hole horizontally and then stayed airborne, hovering beside her friend as they headed downhill; somehow she didn't feel the desire to touch anything she didn't need to. Cyborg had a shoulder-mounted flashlight working, and Starfire kept one of her hands glowing green; either light source should have been adequate for both of them, but a little insurance couldn't hurt. If one Titan got knocked for a loop, the other would still be able to see well enough to retaliate.

The reality of the descent to the nexus of Fixit's lair was almost disappointing. There was no sign that anything large enough to be human or Tamaranean had passed this way for hundreds of years, much less settled in as a permanent resident. A few small animals scurried into the shadows as the two Titans approached; nothing made hostile advances. Pieces of equipment, smashed open and often rusting away or otherwise deteriorating, were scattered throughout the tunnel and practically carpeted the floor when Starfire and Cyborg reached the central area. Cyborg examined several hulks of once-proud machinery and told Starfire that each and every microchip was missing; usually the entire motherboards were gone, in fact, leaving behind empty slots in the casings.

"Almost had to be these S.T.A.R. bozos," he growled. "Seems they take their monopoly real seriously. But they didn't take much of anything _else_, near as I can tell. Regular looters would have carried out big items intact, to use or sell. Robots would be tightly focused on grabbing _exactly _what they were told to grab—so anything that didn't directly involve microchips, they must've just let be!" He paused, twisting his head around to scan the shadows around the edge of this vast chamber. "Did Fixit know they were coming? Did he know what they'd take and what they wouldn't? Was he still here to face them, or did he retreat to some other hidey-hole before they showed?" He peered around, as if expecting to find Fixit's mortal remains, and then sighed. "After all this time, I guess it doesn't really matter. But it would be nice to know how he ended up."

Starfire understood his mood. Her approach was to keep telling herself that everyone else she knew was "still alive," and she would see them again after this temporary problem was resolved, but it was easier to believe that when you weren't standing in the long-abandoned home of one of those people.

"Hey!" Cyborg said suddenly. "This looks like the same table I was on when I woke up that one time!" He thumped it with one metal hand, saying, "Good sturdy stuff—hasn't even rusted—"

Suddenly there was a flash of purple energy that lit up the entire cavern, and even as it faded Cyborg was already twenty feet away from the table as he finished one backward leap. Starfire heard herself make such a high-pitched yelp it qualified as a squeak—even as she powered up both of her hands and looked around frantically for a target to smite—and she immediately felt embarrassed. At her age, she ought to be outgrowing such childish reactions. You never heard _Blackfire_ squeaking under sudden stress! (Laughing spitefully, yes. Squeaking, no.)

Something that sounded remarkably like Fixit's voice said: "Voiceprint confirmed. Person touching the table is . . . Cyborg . . . of the Titans. If you are hearing this message, Cyborg, then the magical manipulations of your teammate Jinx have been successful in leaving behind a 'recording' of a type which robotic intruders will presumably be unable to detect, damage, or activate, as the energies involved exist completely outside the electromagnetic spectrum.

"Robot warriors of the corporate entity calling itself 'the new S.T.A.R. Labs' have already assaulted this place once," Fixit's emotionless voice continued. "I believe they must have had very little hard data regarding the defensive systems I have installed in this place over the past three decades. I survived the battle, yet was only able to render nonfunctional thirty-three attackers out of thirty-five. The other two disengaged and fled north. I anticipate a larger attack soon. However, shortly after that battle, the Titans Jinx and Kid Flash returned from a long voyage to where Robin and Starfire allegedly had been enjoying their honeymoon two years ago, at the time of the first unfortunate occurrences which apparently triggered a cascading series of 'disasters' now known as the Troubles—"

Starfire _squealed _as the implications of that word 'honeymoon' sank in (a trifle belatedly), and thus she missed the next few words of Fixit's message. When she started listening again, the recording was saying: "—informed me they had not been able to pick up the trail of Robin and Starfire if they were still alive, nor find any evidence of their demise. I said I had not had any communications with any of the founding Titans since just after the beginning of the Troubles, and knew nothing of the fates of any of the five. Jinx then suggested leaving a message for any Titans who might arrive in this place at some later date, possibly when I would not be present to personally relay such messages. We agreed to have me dictate while her magics recorded.

"It is not outside the realms of possibility that some non-Titan has managed to trigger this introductory message with a false voiceprint or other artifice," Fixit conceded in the same impassive tone as usual, "yet so far it will have told any foes of the Titans very little they would not have already known or surmised. If one or more of the founding Titans is in fact present, then please submit a cell sample to the purple sphere within the next thirty seconds."

A purple sphere, about the size of a basketball, materialized a few feet in front of Starfire's nose. She reached up, yanked one long red hair away from her scalp, and delicately dropped it into the sphere. There ought to be enough skin attached to satisfy an identity check. There was another room-filling flash of purple, followed by the sphere fading away to reveal a flat, thin metal square, roughly one foot on a side and about an inch high. It hovered in mid-air until Starfire reached out and grasped it firmly; she met with no resistance as she pulled it away from where it had appeared.

Meanwhile Fixit's magically recorded voice was droning on: "If you are hearing this portion of my message, then your DNA has been magically verified against preexisting samples. I am not certain whether any of my intended listeners are familiar with the antiquated technology known as 'phonographic recording.' It preceded the development of 'compact discs' and required less sophisticated equipment to play back an audio track. This is important because reliable CD players may not be available to you by the time you retrieve this record. Please make certain that, when you do play it, you cannot be overheard by anyone not considered absolutely trustworthy. It will direct you to a distant place where Jinx and Kid Flash have stockpiled various materials which might be of particular value if you wish to implement Contingency Plan Seven. Recent circumstances seem to fit the parameters of that Plan, but of course the situation may have mutated considerably before you hear this.

"I donated considerable quantities of equipment and spare parts to be added to the stores of foodstuffs, printed records, textiles, medical supplies, tools, fuel tanks, and sundry items which might be of considerable use in a world where the industrial infrastructure has largely ceased to exist—or ceased to produce and distribute its wares, which amounts to much the same thing.

"I do not know exactly what is on the record or where the stockpile is. If I am captured, my memory banks may be subject to forced entry. What I do not know, I cannot reveal. Good luck, Titans."

"Please," Starfire inquired after the message was over. "What is this Contingency Plan Seven of which he speaks?"

"Beats me!" Cyborg said. "Probably something he and I were going to talk about in another five years. But I never even heard of Contingency Plans One through Six, I swear!"

"This is not promising," Starfire said severely. "His message refers to things he assumes we already know."

"Well, let's be fair about it, Star. How was he supposed to anticipate his message would be heard, hundreds of years in the future, by Titans from several years in his past? He did his best, but nobody can cover all the angles at once!"

They poked around a bit more, but found nothing else worth taking back to the rendezvous with the other Titans.

"Star," Cyborg said as they headed back up the sloping tunnel to the exit. "Here's some friendly advice: Whatever you do, d_on't_ tell Robin the part about the honeymoon."

"Why ever not?" she inquired.

"Well, first there's the problem of pressure. He isn't even calling you his 'girlfriend' yet, is he? If you start chatting about the honeymoon you two 'will be taking' several years in the future—"

"Over seven and a half of your Earth centuries in the past, I think," she corrected scrupulously.

"You know what I mean! It will still be in the future after we get back to where—er, when—we belong! But believe me, if you say anything that sounds like Robin is _bound_ to do something drastic on a certain timetable, it will only be counterproductive! That boy has a mulish streak!"

Starfire frowned thoughtfully. She still remembered the time when she and Robin had been stranded together on an alien planet, and she had wanted to talk about the nature of his feelings for her. It hadn't gone very well. Even as she pondered the possible drawbacks of mentioning hypothetical future matrimony, Cyborg continued his explanation.

"Second, there's the whole 'we want to prevent _this _future from happening' thing. You heard Efim yesterday. Something awful triggered a whole chain reaction of catastrophes that wiped out a hefty chunk of the human race, and you just know Robin's gonna be looking for ways to derail that sequence of events after we make it back home! If you convince him that one of the key elements of the 'wrong' timeline is that everything went downhill like the mother of all avalanches _right after _Robin and Starfire got married and ran off on a honeymoon, what do you think the chances will be of him ever asking you to marry him and go on a honeymoon?"

Now that struck home! "You are wise, Friend Cyborg. We do not need to tell him the part about the honeymoon, for it has no relevance to the matter of where we must seek the other things Fixit spoke of. Of course," Starfire added dubiously, peering at the shallow metal box she still carried, "Jinx and Kid Flash may have referred to it in this recording, thinking it would be heard by the Robin and Starfire who were their contemporaries, if they were still alive and finally escaped from whatever had been keeping them out of contact with their friends for a few years."

"That's a chance we'll just have to take," Cyborg said. "We need to know what's on that record. We need the microchips that might still be waiting for us at the secret stockpile. Fixit wouldn't forget those when he was contributing to an emergency cache. But there's no need to beg for trouble."

"By the way," Starfire inquired, "who is the Kid Flash who, along with Jinx, will evidently be a Titan someday?"

"I've barely heard of him. Some guy with a red and yellow costume who can run so fast it would make your head spin. I guess we oughta look him up sometime, after we get back home. Maybe even give him a spare communicator for emergencies?"

* * *

**Author's Notes:**

X'Hal, a Tamaranean who became a goddess long before the Twentieth Century, was introduced in the Titans comic books set in DC's regular continuity, back in the early 1980s. I don't believe she is ever mentioned in the TV show, but I arbitrarily assume that X'Hal exists in that timeline as well. If you never heard of her before, don't worry about it too much; X'Hal will not actually be participating in the plot of this story. (Unless I change my mind?)

Recently I received a review asking why this is labelled as a "Raven & Robin" story—meaning it can be found by searching through the entire Teen Titans category for the combination of "Raven" and "Robin" as the principal characters—when there's not the faintest trace of any romance smoldering between those two. In case anyone else was wondering along similar lines, I'll address that now. (If you really weren't losing any sleep over it, then just skip these last few paragraphs! I won't blame you!)

In a nutshell, my position (already expressed in a private reply to that reviewer, which I'll now paraphrase) was that I _never _intended any romance between those two, and I wasn't trying to trick anyone into thinking there _would be _such a romance. I merely selected them from pulldown menus for "Character 1" and "Character 2" because I felt they would each be getting "more than their fair share" of the spotlight in this serial before all was said and done, and I felt I ought to pick _someone_ from those menus while I was making the various choices the local software expects of us whenever we create a story.

I've never seen any rule on this site that says our choices of "Character 1" and "Character 2" _must be_ a romantic couple at some point within the story. I am aware that other writers _often _make their selections of "Character 1" and "Character 2" on that basis, and that's certainly their prerogative, but it is not the only valid method for choosing names from those pulldowns. The pulldowns in this category include many villains, for instance; nobody ever told me I wasn't supposed to select one of those villains as "Character 1" or "Character 2" unless I was writing a story which specifically explored the subject of the villain's love life.

Since I've been posting installments in this story for over a year, and this is the first time anyone's even bothered to ask why I have "Raven & Robin" selected as the two lead characters, I infer that most of my readers either agree with my understanding of the considerable latitude we have in choosing "Character 1" and "Character 2" as we see fit—or else just plain don't care about this point! But in case anyone else was worried, I hope this has clarified what I meant—and what I didn't mean—when I chose those two as the "leads."

P.S. If I were trying to promote this as a love story between two of the Titans, I would surely say something to that effect in my summary, to _ensure_ that any devotees of RaeRob shipping knew I was pandering to their tastes!


	13. Chapter 13: Theorizing

**Author's Note:** Beast Boy takes over as viewpoint character again.

* * *

**Chapter Thirteen: Theorizing**

In some ways, Beast Boy was disappointed by this chance to see the "future." Sure, knowing that you were worshipped as a deity—in at least one region; he'd failed to ask how many members the Faith of the Five actually had—was kinda cool, but hundreds of years down the road you'd think all the buildings would be tall glassy spires and all the commuting would be done in _flying_ cars—each one packing its very own antigravity generator under the hood where the internal combustion engine used to be. But instead of progressing, the people of the former United States—and apparently the rest of the world—had regressed badly during the Troubles and then had to build up heavy industry (and make up for lost population so they'd have a decent labor force?) all over again. Combine that with the prohibition on microchips which the group called S.T.A.R. Labs rigidly enforced on the entire world (except for themselves, obviously!), and Beast Boy supposed that it was hard to advance beyond Twentieth Century technology in most respects. No space travel, no DVDs, no cell phones, no CAD, no self-updating spreadsheets, and worst of all, no video games? (He still wondered, vaguely, why the automobile traffic didn't make as much noise as he was used to, but he probably wouldn't have understood the answer anyway.)

Yes, in some ways walking down the streets of Vision was like being trapped in a TV show from the 1950s or 60s. There were differences, though—a much wider range of skin colors, for instance. Beast Boy was not the only green-faced person on the streets, and various shades of blue, orange, and other unlikely colors were also represented, along with the more "normal" ones he'd taken for granted in his era—some of which hadn't gotten much attention in mid-Twentieth Century TV. He wondered if the odd colors were due to extraterrestrial immigration, or elaborate cosmetics, or what.

Then it hit him. What if his future self had gotten married and passed on green-tinted genes to a couple of babies before whatever-the-heck had happened to that older version of Beast Boy during the Troubles? What if some of these greenish-tinted people—or even ones with other colorations—were his own (gulp) descendants?

After chewing on that problem for a minute or two, Beast Boy made a bold decision: He resolved _not to think about it_ any more! It was just too scary, and it made his stomach ache from the stress, and even if some of the people around him were his long-lost future great-great-however-many-great-grandkids, what the heck was he supposed to _do _about it? Rather than cope with suddenly becoming an Ancient Ancestor, he'd much prefer to go another three rounds with Trigon any day of the week; it was less complicated.

Robin had not been in any tearing hurry to cash in all his krugerrands. After checking the prices of a few common items in a store, Robin had muttered some figures as he tried to estimate the relative buying power of modern-day Commonwealth shekels to good old-fashioned American dollars, and then they'd found a shop in Cardy Street where a man sold old stamps and coins. (Well, the vendor called them "old." On the other hand, he admitted most of them were less than five hundred years old, which meant they were several generations younger than Beast Boy, if you looked at it from the right perspective.) Robin had sold the man just one krugerrand—waiting patiently while the vendor confirmed the gold content of the coin with something called "the acid test" (Beast Boy had always thought that was just a figure of speech)—then Robin and Beast Boy had moved over a few blocks and found a jeweler on Wein Way who bought and sold bits of gold. Same test, and nearly the same price, for their second sale of the day!

"The variation in price was about half of one percent," Robin said with satisfaction after they were out of earshot of the second dealer. "I guess both of them were being pretty honest about the current market. That means a troy ounce of gold, worth about seven hundred dollars in our day, runs around two hundred sixty shekels here and now. Interesting. If the Commonwealth has existed for centuries, I'd've expected its currency to get devalued a lot worse than that by this late date. Maybe they've found a way to _really_ curb inflation? Anyway, five hundred twenty shekels, minus the little bit we owe the Rector, ought to tide us over for a bit. I'll just hang on to the other ten krugerrands for emergencies."

Beast Boy really didn't care about economic theory. But he did care about having money to spend. He started making suggestions for things "we really ought to buy while we've got the chance!"

Robin rejected those suggestions out of hand. "Wait until we link up with the others before we decide what our budget needs to be. If Raven's interview with the Sibyl goes well, we may get a lot of help. If it goes badly, we won't want to carry any excess baggage when we leave town in a hurry. All that stuff you want isn't going anywhere in the next few hours, so why rush?"

Beast Boy thought that was a very narrow-minded attitude on his friend's part. For instance: These people had comic books for sale on the newsstands, and Beast Boy really wanted to find out how the artform had evolved over the centuries. The comics of the 1980s had been far more sophisticated in their storytelling than those of the 1940s—he had read enough reprints from the so-called Golden Age to be able to swear to that. (Some of the comic books of the 1990s, on the other hand, had taken horrible wrong turns, and many other titles had merely stagnated in mediocrity for years at a stretch, but that wasn't really the point right now.) Who knew what several more centuries of trial and error might have done to refine the medium?

But did Robin care about all that? No. Beast Boy wasn't sure Robin had ever read a real comic book in his life, although at least the guy looked at newspaper comic strips occasionally. They made their way back to the campus without buying anything whatsoever. Sooner or later the other Titans would show up and then they'd compare notes and work out some sort of plan. Robin and Beast Boy found a convenient spot under a tree, with no one else taking advantage of the shade, and sat down to wait.

Robin didn't say so, but he was obviously brooding over worst-case scenarios regarding what might have happened to Raven. He kept fiddling with his Titans Communicator as if he expected it to ring. Robin himself was the one who had solemnly ordered the other four to maintain radio silence unless a real emergency arose, which should have meant that "no news is good news" if they didn't hear from Raven before she showed up in person, but that obviously didn't keep him from fretting. Robin was not the kind of guy who bit his nails, but he looked as if he would have been biting them ferociously if he were the kind of guy who did that.

Beast Boy finally decided to distract Robin for a few minutes with a different topic of conversation. "About this whole time travel thing—what do you think the chances are that we'll end up stuck here, unable to work our way back?"

"Hmmm?" Robin looked over at him. "Actually, I figure the evidence says we're still on _exactly_ the right track to end up going back home, safe and sound, so we can do whatever the history books of this century say we did as we grew older. I think the books just don't mention this little jaunt, that's all."

"How so? Starfire went forward in time once, and the way she described it, things were touch and go regarding whether or not she and our older-and-gloomier selves would be able to get the upper hand over Warp and send her back where—I mean when—she belonged. It could have gone the other way, easy!"

"Totally different situation," Robin said firmly. "Starfire jumped ahead twenty years to a world where she had, in fact, _been gone_ for that entire twenty years. What she saw was what could have happened to the rest of us _if_ she never made it back home from the future. So if she had stayed there in the future—died there, even—it wouldn't have 'changed history.'"

"So?"

"So we're in a future where history says we kept doing things in the public eye for years _after_ our current ages, which means after this little trip we're accidentally making. One of the things we definitely did was digging a secret shelter a couple of miles away from the Tower and stocking it with supplies—thereby giving the First Sibyl a good refuge decades later, whether or not that was the original mission statement! But we never dug that shelter before we came here—so we've still got to go back when we came from in order to do it later! And I'm sure we did! If we hadn't _already_ reappeared in the Twenty-First Century and done it, this world around us wouldn't be here now, in the Twenty-Eighth! We'd be standing in the middle of a world where the Teen Titans mysteriously vanished after they'd only been a group for a couple of years, instead!"

Beast Boy's eyes crossed as he tried to work that one out. "But futures can change in the blink of an eye, right? Didn't Star undo the nasty future she saw? The moment we saw her pop right back out of the wormhole in the museum, just after she flew into it, that automatically meant she'd 'erased' the world she'd just visited where she had stayed 'missing in action' after chasing Warp through the wormhole in the first place! What if we accidentally do something here that makes it _impossible_ for _all five_ of us to go back and dig that shelter and do anything else the books say we did? Like one of us getting _killed_ here?"

Robin shrugged. "In that case, I'm guessing this future timeline would evaporate because over seven centuries of its 'established history' had just gone up in smoke. So try not to get killed, okay?"

Beast Boy snapped off a salute. "Yes, sir, fearless leader! Just as a favor to you, I'll try my best!" Then he got more serious. "But supposing it happened anyway, to one of us. If everything around the other four of us today bursts like a soap bubble, what happens to us visitors who didn't belong in this era in the first place?" Even as he spoke, Beast Boy made a mental note to rent the "Back to the Future" trilogy as soon as they got back home and he could borrow DVDs from a video store. He had only watched those movies once, years ago (or centuries ago, depending on how you looked at it?), and his memory was fuzzy on the fine points of time travel theory.

Meanwhile, Robin was saying patiently, "How would I know? Maybe we'd suddenly find ourselves standing in an all-new, all-different version of 2771! A world where nobody remembers the Teen Titans at all! At least we could still look for a way back home. Or maybe we'd all just evaporate too, and our friends in the Twenty-First Century would _never_ figure out what happened to us! But don't sweat it, Beast Boy—I figure evaporating in the blink of an eye wouldn't be painful, so what's to worry about? It would all be over before you knew there was a problem!"

"Thanks," Beast Boy growled. "That really took a load off my mind."

"Always glad to help," Robin said deadpan. "No, I figure the time to really_ worry _about 'changing future history' will be _after_ we make it back home. Then we figure out how to prevent the Troubles from happening and global civilization crashing and burning as a result." He looked thoughtful. "Actually, we may want to buy a few history books before we go home . . . although I'm not sure they won't evaporate on us after we get back, if we start undoing the history in them. . . ."

Well, at least Beast Boy had gotten his friend to stop worrying about Raven for a few minutes.


	14. Chapter 14: Put Another Record On

**Author's Note:** I considered devoting a short chapter to showing the various Titans keeping their rendezvous back on the campus, but reconsidered. Since they've been split up three ways for the last few chapters (Robin and Beast Boy, Starfire and Cyborg, and Raven by herself), it stands to reason that they'll take some time to all bring each other up to speed on matters of interest. "But," I said to myself, "my faithful readers _already know_ perfectly well what's been happening to everybody in those recent chapters, so let's just fast-forward an hour or two." (Who says I don't know how to show mercy to my readers?)

We'll get Cyborg's viewpoint again in this one. Enjoy it while it lasts (you'll see what I mean soon enough).

* * *

**Chapter Fourteen: Put Another Record On**

**The Sibyl's Residence  
****Wolfman Plaza  
****Vision, in the Madisonian Commonwealth  
****5 June 2771 C.E.**

Five Titans and one religious leader were gathered in the office of the latter. No one else was within these walls. The Sibyl had ordered _everyone_ on her staff to get out of the house until further notice. Two secretaries and a handful of domestics had gone quietly. Her armed guards had shown a vast lack of enthusiasm at the idea of leaving her alone in the building with a pack of _strangers_—the Sibyl still wasn't telling people that these five were the original Titans—but in the end they too had followed orders. Cyborg supposed it was a bit easier to stomach such orders if you knew the lady giving them was one of the most powerful psychics in the world, and thus ought to be a better-than-average judge of character. Presumably they were accustomed to seeing her grant private audiences with no eavesdroppers allowed—and he'd bet money her office walls were soundproofed—but he got the impression that it was extremely rare for her to chase everyone out of the entire house just to be on the safe side.

After the guards had taken up new posts just outside the house, the Sibyl had invited the Titans to search the rest of the house for any stray eavesdroppers. They found none. Cyborg had also used a few of his built-in sensors to test for any trace of concealed bugs and came up empty. Then they reconvened in Sibyl Barabel's office upstairs, where she opened up a cabinet to reveal her own phonograph. Cyborg gathered everyone had one these days, now that CD players were a thing of the past. It occurred to him that Fixit had been right to resort to phonographic recording for this message—you could actually make a hand-cranked version which didn't even use electric current, right? If Cyborg actually needed to, in a post-apocalyptic scenario, eventually he could have built one from scratch.

After ensuring that Cyborg knew how to use the controls, the Sibyl settled down behind her desk, folded her hands, and sat very still, just observing what her visitors did without participating. Cyborg still didn't know what to make of her, even after Raven had vouched for the woman as decent and sincere, but he had to admit that she wasn't gushing and fawning over them the way he might have feared from their so-called chief worshipper. Heck, she hadn't even asked for an autograph! (Not that Cyborg had ever really understood the appeal of collecting celebrity autographs—what on earth could you _do_ with the silly things after you had them?)

They started the record. Jinx's voice filled the room. It rapidly became clear that most of the listeners didn't understand a word she was saying. Raven did, though. Cyborg wasn't sure about the Sibyl, since she was just looking bland and not saying a word. He had a feeling he'd lose his shirt if he ever played poker with her. (Not that he normally wore a shirt nowadays, but that wasn't the point.)

After about thirty seconds, Raven touched a lever and stopped the record. "Ancient Sumerian," she explained. "That first bit was numbers—she included the words 'north' and 'west,' so I'm thinking 'latitude and longitude.'" She rattled off the English translation. "We can find it on a map later. There's more to the message, but I figured you guys would want to know something right away, to reassure you we weren't wasting our time playing this thing."

"Ancient Sumerian?" Cyborg repeated. "I didn't even know Jinx spoke it! They weren't taking any chances on any Tom, Dick, or Harry being able to steal this record and learn where a treasure trove was, eh?"

"That's awkward tradecraft, though," Robin commented. "Seems to create an unnecessary point failure source. What if just a couple of us had made it into Fixit's lair and found this record, but Raven wasn't handy to interpret . . . because she was already dead or something?"

Raven shrugged slightly. "Maybe I'm scheduled to teach the language to the rest of you, sometime after we get back? So Jinx, years later, 'knew' any of we five would be able to make sense of those numbers, whereas practically nobody else would be likely to even _recognize_ what language it was in the first place?"

"Our own _secret_ language?" Beast Boy mused. "Cool! How long would it take me to learn Ancient Sumerian, anyway?"

Raven opened her mouth—then paused and visibly thought better of whatever she'd been about to say—and finally muttered, "Not sure. I never tried to teach you a language before. Maybe you'd be a natural."

After living in the same Tower with her for the last couple of years, and even getting lost inside her head once, Cyborg felt he understood Raven fairly well. He figured her first reflex had been to offer a truly scathing estimate of Beast Boy's learning curve, but she had bitten it back in the nick of time. Who said that girl couldn't learn to be tactful?

"Okay, start it up again," Robin directed. "The rest of us will just have to wait quietly until you can give us the full translation."

Raven reached for the controls on the player—

There was very little warning. A window near the Sibyl's desk shattered, and something small and dark flew into the center of the room—

_BANG!_

The sudden white light was blinding and the loud noise had people clutching at their ears. Even Cyborg slapped one metal hand over his own flesh-and-blood ear, and closed his right eye to reduce the distraction while his electronic one took over. It couldn't suffer from after-images on the retina it didn't have.

Three of the other Titans must have been completely blinded. Beast Boy, with his notoriously erratic attention span, was the exception—he'd been looking at something over by the door when the window broke and the flash-bang grenade entered, and the way he moved suggested he had at least a blurred view of the robots coming in through the now-shattered window. (Completely different design from the ones the Titans had chased through a wormhole yesterday, Cyborg noted. Bigger, thicker, different color pattern, not to mention the different tactics, using flash-bangs to soften up the human opposition in the first two seconds.)

As Beast Boy turned around, he was already morphing into a gorilla as he looked for something to smite—and then the _second_ flash-bang went off! The gorilla howled and stumbled, as blind as Starfire, whom he tripped over a moment later.

Robin was doing his best. He had his hands up and was moving carefully toward the window by memory, but he was still blind and had to be somewhat dazed by the two consecutive bangs rattling his eardrums. He couldn't see the taser coming before it hit his chest. He collapsed. Most of the others were already down. Raven had instinctively curled into a ball and wrapped herself and the record player up in a black force field, but she wouldn't be lashing out at anything until she could distinguish friend from foe.

Cyborg smashed one robot with his right hand while grabbing the Sibyl and tossing her further away from the window with his left, then he aimed his sonic cannon at another robot—

—And then he fell down, as something hit him so hard all his electronics glitched and his biological components were suddenly feeling paralyzed. He wasn't sure what had happened, but these robots definitely had come loaded for bear. He couldn't even resist as two of the attackers picked him up and heaved him out the window. He realized he'd been hearing gunfire from that direction for the last few seconds; the Sibyl's guards must be reacting. He just hoped none of them were panicked enough to shoot in through the window; they might hit their own principal or her guests!


	15. Ch 15: Ready to Play the Record, Take 2

**Author's Note:** I would have sworn it had been less than a month since I last updated this serial. But I would have been wrong. I got kinda distracted during the holiday season, what with one thing and another. Anyway! We've skipped ahead twenty or thirty minutes in the narrative. We'll get Robin's perspective again.

* * *

**Chapter Fifteen: Ready to Play the Record, Take Two**

The robots had left quickly after they had Cyborg. Their interest in the other four Titans, as well as the Sibyl whose office they had briefly invaded, appeared to be nil—except for one little detail: Robin's utility belt had been removed while he was blinded. He hadn't yet realized the attackers were robotic, and his best efforts to harm whoever wanted his belt had only hurt his own hands before he started to sort out what was happening.

A minute later, four of the Sibyl's guards had stormed into the office, obviously fearing the worst. The relief on their faces when they saw Sibyl Barabel stand up to greet them was manifest. By that time the attacking robots were gone, not just from the office but from the neighborhood. The Sibyl had been very firm in telling the guards to get plastic sheeting up over the broken window as quickly as possible, and then to exit the house _again_ while she and her guests continued their private discussion in another room. Replacing the glass could wait.

While the Sibyl was doing that, Raven had quietly made the rounds, touching anyone who'd been cut by flying glass and encouraging the flesh to heal faster. No one was seriously injured—Robin, for instance, hadn't even been consciously aware of two small cuts on his left arm until Raven called his attention to them. His hands definitely felt better after she had touched them and concentrated on whatever it was she concentrated on at times like this, though.

The Sibyl had accepted a quick report from the officer in command of the guards after he'd had time to interview his men and other witnesses outside the house. The general consensus was that a black guy had been carried away by a large robotic helicopter flying northward. (Apparently the robots had left Cyborg's holographic disguise alone for the time being—no one had mentioned gleaming white metal as the abductee's most distinguishing characteristic.)

The guards swore they had not fired at the copter for fears of hitting its prisoner, although they thought they had managed to disable a few of the smaller, bipedal robots—all of which had been retrieved by other robots and loaded into the helicopter as part of the aerial retreat.

Now they were down in a cellar, with Raven carrying the record player. The Sybil had explained that it was always possible the robots had planted some super-sophisticated bugs in her office, and sweeping for those would take time. In the meantime, she thought her visitors would prefer the privacy of a different chamber.

Predictably, Beast Boy was grumbling at how quickly the team had been knocked back on its heels. "Those S.T.A.R. robots don't fight fair!"

"Well, no," Robin said judiciously. "What does a robot care about Marquis of Queensberry rules, or the thrill of testing yourself by going one-on-one with a worthy opponent? They didn't want to give us a sporting chance; they wanted to carry out their mission as efficiently as possible and then leave."

Batman's enemies in Gotham didn't normally use flash-bang grenades, and neither did the bad guys in Jump City, so Robin had precious little experience in dealing with them. He wondered how much difference it would have made if he'd been wearing dark glasses or goggles. The noise still would've been a problem, though. Insert earplugs the next time you knew you were about to fight them? Not that he'd known it was coming this time, though—and wearing earplugs all day, every day, just to be on the safe side, seemed hopelessly impractical.

"My teachers in tactics told me that the 'element of surprise' acts as a force multiplier which can make the attacking force at least three times as effective as it otherwise would be, in the short term," Starfire said solemnly. "I think their point has been proven once again."

"Yeah, sure, so they surprised us—but there's something I still don't get," Beast Boy complained, turning to glare at Sibyl Barabel. "If _you're_ so powerful, how come you didn't know about those robots sneaking up _before_ they broke the glass and flash-banged us?"

The Sibyl didn't answer directly. She didn't even look offended. Instead, she glanced at Raven as if handing the ball to her. Raven gave Beast Boy a withering look and asked, "Have _you_ ever psychically detected a robot's emotions as it approached you?"

"Er . . . no?"

"Right. Me neither. Because robots don't _have_ emotions in the first place. And don't tell me about your friend Robotman's emotions; you know perfectly well he doesn't count."

Dismissing the subject, Raven looked down at the record player she had shielded during the brief invasion. "Still, my best guess was that they'd want to confiscate this message. I kept expecting them to smash _through_ my shield to get at it. They didn't even try."

"S.T.A.R.'s mechanical legions confiscate or destroy microchips wherever they can find them," Sibyl Barabel said. "Beyond that, they rarely care about _anything_ outside their own boundaries. I am guessing their agents in Vision had somehow detected suspicious electronic 'noise' radiating from your friend and the robots were dispatched to investigate."

Raven frowned. "So it was just _coincidence_ that they interrupted us while we were playing Jinx's record?"

Robin had noticed before that with her mystical background, Raven had little faith in the concept of strange juxtapositions of circumstances "just happening to occur" at certain times and places. Of course, Batman felt much the same way about big coincidences, although he was less inclined to blame unseen supernatural forces and more inclined to consider "conspiracy theory" explanations.

Robin took the contrary point of view in this case. "If they'd attacked any time in the past two hours, you might have thought they were trying to prevent us from ever starting the record. If they attacked us any time in the next few days, you might suspect them of trying to stop us from following the directions heard on the record. So no, I'm not convinced there was anything special about the precise moment of the actual attack, from the robots' point of view. Especially considering that, as _you_ said, they showed absolutely no interest in the record while they were here."

Raven didn't actually argue that point any further, which Robin took as her way of silently conceding he might have a point. But she didn't look happy at this conclusion, either. (Granted, with Raven that was no surprise.)

Apparently she was already pursuing a new train of thought. "I didn't have time to start the record playing again before the robots came into the room, so I don't think they heard anything from it. Even assuming they know somebody who is fluent in Ancient Sumerian."

She paused significantly—Robin could just feel the significance crawling through the air towards him—and then finished: "But a minute earlier I'd translated the latitude and longitude of a big secret cache into _English_ for you guys, and _Cyborg_ heard those coordinates. He must have stored them in memory—both organic and electronic memory, I imagine. And now Cyborg's in their hands."

She paused to see if her meaning sunk in. Robin winced as the implications did, in fact, register with his imagination. Until now, he hadn't gotten around to thinking about Cyborg as a torture subject yet—or he hadn't _wanted_ to think of it?

The look of horror on Starfire's face suggested she was keeping up on this one—not too surprising after what Robin had gathered about the way the Gordanians treated prisoners—and Beast Boy was only lagging a little behind; he started to say, "C'mon, guys! You all know Cyborg would never spill the beans about our plans—" before it obviously dawned on him that the bean-spilling might not be voluntary.

Robin decided to spell it out, though. Just in case they weren't all thinking along exactly the same lines. "My best guess? The robots probably hit him with a localized EMP to knock out his systems. Or some other weapon that amounted to much the same thing in practice. I don't know how long that would cripple him, but if, while his arms and legs are paralyzed, they start . . . extracting . . . all the electronic data-storage devices in his body, and scanning them on other computers at their base, how could he possibly stop them from finding records of everything he's seen and heard since we landed in this crazy future?"

Starfire said, "Then we must extricate him from their clutches as quickly as possible!"

(Earlier, as their vision was finally clearing, Beast Boy had been _just barely_ quick enough to turn into a gorilla and grab onto Star before she could go flying off after Cyborg's abductors, planning to fight them in mid-air, single-handedly if need be. Before she could figure out how to shake Beast Boy off without hurting him, Robin had managed to persuade her that she wouldn't do much better against flash-bangs the second time around without some serious preparations, but it hadn't been an easy sell.)

The Sibyl said patiently, "By now he's halfway back to their headquarters complex. Penetrating its security has been tried. And tried, and tried, _and tried_, over the centuries. You are not the only people who ever found reason to hate S.T.A.R. Labs. Not even the only group of people with superpowers." (Robin noted that she politely didn't comment on his _lack_ of special powers.) "But I don't think any prisoner in that complex has escaped, even with outside assistance, in at least four hundred years."

Inevitably, Starfire asked: "What happened four hundred years ago?"

"There was a horrible earthquake. The epicenter was a little ways offshore from their headquarters. The resultant tsunami drenched the place. A few weeks later a man turned up here in Vision, seeking sanctuary. He said he'd been arrested by S.T.A.R.'s security forces and taken to their HQ for interrogation. In between walls collapsing and some of the robots getting smashed by the wave and then short-circuited by the floodwaters, he was about to escape."

Robin thought: _Big underwater earthquake. So if we just had Terra around, and if she wanted to help, she might be able to make history repeat itself._ But that was hopelessly hypothetical. And even if it hadn't been, he'd still have some _serious_ qualms about throwing tidal waves at inhabited coastal areas.

Meanwhile, Beast Boy was asking the obvious follow-up question. "What happened to the guy after he made it this far?"

"Oh, we gave him a thorough debriefing for any useful intelligence. Then we handed him back to S.T.A.R. as a diplomatic gesture, even though we didn't—and still don't—have any formal treaties with them."

Robin blinked. "You gave him back?"

The Sibyl's calm features didn't even twitch as she explained the reasoning of leaders of long ago. "Because of why he had been arrested in the first place. He sought to give the impression that he was just a political dissident. Actually, S.T.A.R. had arrested him on suspicion of murder. Wallis was Sibyl in those days; she examined his mind herself and determined he was _guilty_, without anything we'd call 'sufficiently mitigating circumstances.' She talked it over with the Chairman of the Commonwealth and they agreed there was no need to set a precedent for encouraging murderers to cross our borders as an easy way of escaping justice at home."

Robin was trying to improve his mental picture of the international politics involved. The Commonwealth had no extradition treaty with S.T.A.R., but sometimes acted as if it did? The two countries were not officially at war, even though S.T.A.R. openly sent robot commandos over the border when it felt the need? And this had been going on for hundreds of years? Like an extra-long Cold War?

_First things first. _"Right now we need to hear the rest of that record," he said firmly. "Then we may have a better idea of how important it is, and whether or not finding it first would leave us better-equipped to rescue Cyborg than we are right this minute."

The other Titans looked less than thrilled at the way he implied they might leave Cyborg to fend for himself for awhile—which was only fair, since Robin felt rotten about it himself—but they couldn't really disagree with the idea that it wouldn't hurt anything to finish Jinx's record first. Raven carefully set the machine down, plugged it in to a wall socket, and started the record playing again.

* * *

**Author's Note: **In case anyone has forgotten this (or never saw the episode which mentioned it): Beast Boy's old buddy Robotman, a founding member of the Doom Patrol, is basically the brain of a human named Cliff Steele, now located inside a robot body. Since Cliff still has a human brain, he still has human thoughts and emotions. That's why Raven says he "doesn't count" as an example of a real robot.


End file.
